


The Girl and The Goddess

by queen_insane



Series: The Tale of Destiny [2]
Category: Black Sails, Pirates of the Caribbean (Movies)
Genre: But Somehow not Character Death, Character Death, F/F, F/M, Justice for Giselle and Scarlett, OC POV, So Many Undead Characters, The Fix-It for the Fix-It
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-25
Updated: 2021-02-08
Packaged: 2021-03-11 00:22:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 38,148
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28016157
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/queen_insane/pseuds/queen_insane
Summary: The pirates, along with Katharine, Will, and Elizabeth, have secured the fate of modern piracy for the time being. But time has a way of shifting the battlefield and the pieces in play.Caroline Norrington is young but she dreams of adventure on the high seas and together with the boy she has growing feelings for, she's going to get it. However, not all adventures are what they seem, and once again the fate of the ocean and piracy will find itself hanging in the balance.
Relationships: Elizabeth Swann/Original Female Character(s), Elizabeth Swann/Will Turner, James Norrington/Original Female Character(s), Original Female Character(s)/Original Male Character(s)
Series: The Tale of Destiny [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2049327
Kudos: 2





	1. Part 1.1: The Sickness

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Two months after the battle against Cutler Beckett, everything changes. Again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is rated M basically for the same reason the other one was. It still leans closer to T, but I do think this one has more M moments than the first one.

Katharine stood at the bow of The Flying Dutchman. The sky above her was littered with stars, and the ship rocked softly on The Sea of the Dead. The only thing that alerted her to the fact that this was a dream was the absence of bodies. The Sea of the Dead was never wanting for bodies. She had been dreaming more intensely these last few days although Katharine did not know why. It had only been what felt like a scant two months since she had left Elizabeth and James behind and the loss of them, reminded her of the heart she had that no longer beat. A wave battered against the side of the boat and Katharine peered into the churning water. A second wave crashed against the hull, and the ship began to rock dangerously. The rocking grew in intensity and so then did the waves. Finally a large wave climbed up the side of The Flying Dutchman and when it pulled back there was a mountain of sand crabs on the deck of the ship.

The sand crabs began to grow hand in hand until they were the shape of a person. The shape and face of a body that Katharine could not for the life of her forget, no matter how hard she tried, “Calypso,” she said, “Another night together?”

The goddess of the sea looked out over the dominion of her dead, “The sea has started to grow rough again.”

It had been nights and nights of visits but this was the first time the goddess had said anything of this sort to her, “The ocean is always rougher at night,” Katharine told her.

“No, this is not the same,” Calypso turned to Katharine and touched her belly, “The seas are rough.”

Katharine woke, her hammock swinging violently as a sudden bout of nausea came over her. Her sudden movement alerted Will’s father Bill who blinked awake, to watch her stumble up onto the deck of the ship. She would not, Katharine swore to herself, be sick into The Sea of the Dead. That was not acceptable. But her stomach churned, and she had to be sick somewhere. Anywhere. At the helm Will looked at her, his eyebrow cocked in worry, “Katharine?”

“I think I’m going to be sick,” she announced, hand still clutched to her mouth, turning a number of her words into mumbles.

“Not into the sea you won’t.”

“They’re already dead,” Katharine told him, “What harm could it do?”

The eyebrow he raised told her exactly what sort of harm it could do. So instead Katharine stumbled over to one of the buckets they used to clean the deck with, and was sick inside of it instead. When she was done she collapsed on the deck just in time for Will to cry out, “Stragglers, port-side!”

Katharine leaned over the rail to look down into the sea and sure enough there were two men in a boat, standing up swords drawn. The boat was precariously rocking back and forth, and Katharine knew that if they fell into the drink they would be lost for good. Standing, and still rather woozy from losing what had been, well not breakfast exactly but something, she stared down at the men and called out to them, “Please sit down,” they glanced up at her, “I will come down there if you don’t and you do not want that from me.”

By now Bill had climbed to the main deck having heard his son’s command and was staring at Will with a face full of worry, “Is it all managed up here?”

“It should be,” Will answered, “If Katharine gets her wits about her.”

“I told you I was sick,” under her the men had decided to ignore her and were trading blows again, “Alright,” she yelled down to them, “Your choice.”

With her remaining strength she pulled herself up to the rail, and steadied her body. Then she tugged her flute out of her belt and began to play. At first the song was soft but the notes picked up in their pace and the boat the men were fighting on began to hover in the air. As she continued to play, cannons from below deck made a small stair path that she could walk down until she was eye to eye with the men in the rowboat. They seemed shocked to see her come down as she had, “My Captain cannot manage you all, so, tell me what you did to each other in life that has you so at each other's throats in death, ready to risk everything to the depths of the sea.”

“He stole my girl,” one of them told him.

The other man glared and looked at her, “He’s a liar. She was my girl and we had plans to run off together and explore the high seas.”

Well, that was pedestrian. Katharine had her suspicions that they had died fighting over her, but that was neither here nor there, “It’s clear the two of you must have been friends before,” she sighed, “So here is what is going to happen. You are going to put your swords away, treat this dinghy right, and if you don’t I will tip your little vessel into the drink and both of you will be lost to the waves never to see your proper resting place. Are we clear?”

They looked at her, then looked down into the dark water where lost souls who still struggled to find their peace drifted by like so much refuse and then nodded, “Yes my lady.”

Having pacified both men, Katharine walked back up the stairs she had made herself and landed back on the deck, “If we ever fight like that over Elizabeth,” she told Will, “Please make sure I topple myself into the dark of The Sea of the Dead never to be seen again.”

“That seems rather defeatist,” Will grinned at her, “But I think we’ll manage.”

Katharine smiled back in return and then went to make sure the rigging was safe. Perhaps then the sickness had just been a passing thing. Something that was happening because the waters here were different and she had not gotten her sea legs yet. Even as she thought it however, it felt hollow. But there were other things to do and other important bits of business to get down to. The worry could wait.

\---

A month later - or however long time had passed, it was hard to figure out time down here - Katharine knew it could not wait. She stood in front of the mirror in the sleeping quarters section of the lower deck and stared down at her stomach. It seemed wildly impossible, and yet here she was. She poked her belly one more time to be sure and then bit her lip. Above her she could hear the crew that had decided to remain with Will running around the deck. She would have to face them eventually, so she climbed up onto the deck and was very glad to see that Bill was at the helm instead of the Flying Dutchman’s usual captain. Because it meant that Will was in his quarters. Alone.

She found him at his desk, chair tipped back and hat upon his face, sleeping rather more soundly than Katharine would expect from someone in his precarious position. She knocked on the door, having already entered, and then knocked harder when he didn’t stir the first time. The sound of her louder rap startled him into an alert state. He blinked at her, “Katharine?”

“I’m pregnant,” she told him rather succinctly.

“That’s impossible.”

Will pitched back into an acceptable position, his chair legs now flat on the ground, “I’ve been telling myself that many times, and yet I am pregnant.”

“You are also mostly dead,” he told her as if Katharine needed reminding.

She crossed her arms over her belly which had just, just began to show and rolled her eyes, “Whether I’m dead or not has very little bearing. Because I am clearly with child.”

He stared at her for a pinch too long and then his eyes, and Katharine could tell it was an attempt to be casual, roamed up and down her form settling over her stomach, “I-”

“Do you not believe me?”

“No,” he admitted, “I do,” oh thank Calypso, “However I am at a loss of what we are supposed to do about it. You can’t have the child here.”

“Clearly,” Katharine had known this the second she had realized that though some small oddity she was with child, “But what do we do? If we go above Calypso will rage.”

“We could see if she could make -” and Will struggled to get the next couple of words out, “- an exception.”

“How?”

“Well the pirates must have had some way to call her, if they were able to bind her.”

That actually made far too much sense and Katharine was shocked that it hadn’t come to her. Although she had been, to put it bluntly, too concerned with the fact that she was often sick. And then it had been a bit terrifying to realize she was also now with child. Miracles of miracles, “Do you think your father would know?”

The look on Will’s face said that he very much did think that his father might know just what had been done to summon Calypso. The problem, Katharine realized, and which Will must have already considered, was how they were going to wheedle the information out of him.

\---

Easily, it turned out. Upon hearing that there was going to be a birth - the crew - which had mostly been depressed for the doldrums of their day, were greatly cheered. A number of them tried to touch Katharine’s stomach for which she had to smack their hands away. Eventually yelling at them to stop. Bill was just as confounded as Will as to how Katharine was with child considering her state of both life and undeath, but as the only other person Katharine let touch her stomach, was able to confirm as much as Katharine had. There was something growing inside of her.

“It’s a bit of an old ritual,” Bill confirmed, “Needs a lot of things, blood of a Pirate Captain, the essence of the sea, some sort of payment, and then a declaration of summon that must be said as a declaration of love.”

“Well we have three of those things,” Will said, gesturing to himself, then to the flute on Katharine’s hip, before pulling out a coin that was left over from the upside.

“It’s the declaration of love I’m worried about,” Bill told him, “It’s impossible to fake. You must really mean it. Has to come from the heart.”

“I’ll make it work,” Katharine told them, “I promise.”

Will seemed to agree with this so he pulled his knife out of its sheath, and dragged it across his palm. Squeezing his hand he held it over Katharine’s flute letting a few drops fall onto her instrument. They danced between the cracks staining the wood. Katharine desperately hoped the blood would wash out. Then he handed her the coin which she held between her knuckles. Bringing the flute up to her lips Katharine thought that a song could be something that could summon. A song could be played in love for one that they were besotted with.

A picture of James and Elizabeth appeared in her mind and she began to play for them, imagined the two of them standing in front of her. Then the scene shifted to the moment where Will had given her the sword that she still wore on her hip, the last real moment she remembered where things had been as she thought they always would. She continued to play and slowly distanced herself from the scene as an image, but clung onto the emotion it arose inside of her. Keeping that pearl alive in her heart, she drew upon the Calypso she had seen in her dreams. The one that she knew was free as the sea. The rest of the notes came easily, haunted and shrill but full of an emotion that one listening could not mistake for anything other than love.

Between her knuckles the coin turned to fog, and then to mist. There was a flash of green on the horizon that lit up the darkness of the river of the dead. Then Calypso stood on the deck of the ship, a smile upon her features. It was the goddess from Katharine’s dreams, not the one from before they had unbound her. Beautiful and glowing, “I was wondering when you would understand,” she stepped forward and touched Katharine’s stomach in the same way she had in her dream, “I did try to tell you.”

“Well it wasn’t very obvious,” she removed the goddess’s hand.

“It would have been if you listened.”

Will cleared his throat and both women turned to look at him, “We did have a purpose for calling you here my lady of the sea.”

“I cannot give you what you seek,” she told Will and Katharine felt her mood plummet but then she turned to Katharine, “But to you I can offer one week. A drop in the ocean of time, every twelve moon cycles,” she moved her hand again back to Katharine’s stomach and a soft heat spread there, “On the occasion of the birth.”

One week. It seemed so short and yet Katharine would take anything. As long as it meant she was able to see her child. Even if it was in days and seconds, in moments. Katharine nodded, “Yes.”

“Then all you need to do is play,” Calypso then touched Katharine’s flute and Katharine had the feeling that she was granting it some great power, “The flute will guide you home.”

There was a shower of mist and then Calypso was no more. It covered Katharine’s face, and she touched it almost reverently. Soon. Soon she would see James again. And - oh god how terribly awkward to show up on his doorstep minutes from birth. Still, if she knew her husband, he would make the best of it. He somehow always did.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the second story in a trio, in the first one there was very little Black Sails crossover, this one has far more to the point where it's a minor plot point. This story unlike the first one is completely original. If the first one was informed by Pirates of the Caribbean, this one is more of a mix of Black Sail's grounded gritty nature and Pirate's love of fun adventure and use of magic. I consider it a "tonal bridge" between the two pieces of media. 
> 
> Because of its placement after the first three pirate movies, anything past them is considered non-canon. Will and Elizabeth's child does not exist in this universe. This story also continues with the historical time placement of the first three films, sticking with their placement in the very late 1600s instead of the 1720s so as to better fit with the historical time placement of Black Sails which takes place in the late 1710s. As mentioned - it all works out. Somehow.
> 
> Thanks for reading! Let's get into it with Katharine and the child she is about to bring into the world.


	2. Part 1.2: The Birth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The crew of The Dutchman grows, and then so does Katharine's family.

From that moment on Katharine started to count the days. Bill told her that she was being willful and that she would know when she knew, but she couldn’t help it really. She built a makeshift calendar from loose pages in Will’s Captain Cabin and each time she woke up, Katharine would come in and mark off a day. Slowly watching as the calendar filled up with mark after mark after mark. And the days did slip by. From case to case as they worked tirelessly to send those souls lost to the sea to their final resting place. For there were many.

A man who could not let go of his jewels and had died clutching them, unable to truly move on until they were dumped into the sea. An elderly gentleman whose ship had sunk halfway to England, who had bought his son a rare item from Boston and now would not be able to share it. Two pirates from the East who had been friends but died fighting over a cache of silks they had found that would have made them rich. Then a naval officer from Spain who had died peacefully on his deathbed, but had not been able to get the sound of the ocean out of his head. All sorts of people, who had lived lives, but died with the sea in their hearts.

Until finally a woman pirate, a rare oddity, who had taken up the sword because she had seen what Elizabeth had done, and died before meeting her. When she had spoken Elizabeth’s name at first a quiet had gone over the crew, but Will had invited her into The Flying Dutchman and for a little while proceeded to tell her story after story. Enchanting her, and the crew with stories of the Pirate King. For two weeks she enjoyed their company, and they hers.

When the time had come to send her back to sea she had been ready to say good-bye but the crew, who had gotten used to her presence had not been. And so she stayed. Her name was Jean and she became a godsend to Katharine, helping her when she started to get too big. She wasn’t a perfectly practiced pirate, since she had only taken up the sword and trade after Elizabeth had become King - which according to her had only been about five months prior - but she did her best. Over time, Katharine walked her through tying knots and going over which sail did what on The Flying Dutchman so that Jean could be as efficient and well versed as possible. Katharine also taught her about how to talk to those in boats who were not ready to go yet and how to fish souls out of the sea.

How, if the boat-less souls were glowing a certain white light then they were ready to go, having spent enough time lost in the undertow. Jean was incredibly empathic and the souls they fished out of the sea took to her like a moth to flame. Boat-less or no, she could talk them into accepting their fate faster and better than Katharine could sometimes. She was a natural, and every day that passed Katharine became glad that Jean had decided to stay. Glad that she had help in pacifying souls. And Jean seemed to enjoy it too. Enjoyed helping them to bed and seeing them cross over. Other than one soul named Ralph who attacked her the second she fished him out of the sea. He had been a sailor on one of the boats that Jean had attacked before her untimely death. She had struck him through the stomach and he had been in the dark sea waiting and hoping for revenge for some time. The two had traded sword blows on the deck of The Dutchman until they were both winded.

They had kept Ralph too - not for lack of trying to get him to leave - and slowly he and Jean came to be if not friends, but good comrades. They were sitting there on the deck of the ship, stories and laughter between them in lieu of drink and food, Katharine playing her flute with no intention to influence, when a note on the instrument skipped. Ralph looked at her, “That doesn’t normally happen, you’re a much better player than that.”

“The baby kicked,” Katharine said by way of explanation.

It wasn’t the first time it had happened, the baby had been kicking up a storm for a few months now but the child was growing, and the kicks with it. She stared down at her stomach and gave it a small pat, Jean grinned, “Can I touch?”

“You always touch,” Ralph mocked her.

“And it always feels incredible. You’re being dour for no reason other than to be dour Ralph.”

“How many weeks has it been now?” Will asked Katharine earnestly, changing the topic as he went.

“Thirty-six,” Katharine answered, “She’ll be coming soon.”

Everyone was sure that the baby was going to be a girl. Bill had done some old pirate ritual from long ago that was able to tell the gender of the child, and it had come up girl every time. Jean on the other hand came from a suspicious family of in her words “soothsayers” and had other ways of telling. How early Katharine got up. When her sickness had started, how much trouble it had given her before it ended. Even by the way that Katharine walked across the deck. Katharine believed them both. It was hard not to when her flute could summon the goddess of the sea and they were all sat in a boat among the dead. Ralph on the other hand thought they were all full of it, “Have you decided a name?” Bill asked, glancing at them from behind the wheel of the ship where he was mostly commonly seen.

“I thought I would let James name her,” Katharine confessed, “She’s not just mine, and he’s going to be so terribly shocked that I thought of giving him this when he’s the one who is going to end up calling her by her name more than I.”

“That’s terribly romantic,” Will said, “Good for you.”

“I do try to be terribly romantic sometimes,” Katharine answered, “It’s one of my greatest failings.”

Laughter went up among the five of them and Katharine brought the flute up to her mouth to begin to play again. The notes floated around the boat and wove through the crew around them. Soon, the music whispered, soon.

\---

Calypso came to her in dream three weeks later. They stood on a beach with white sand and looked out over the vast and sparkling blue ocean. Katharine knew where they were without having to ask. This is where she had last seen James. Where she had kissed Elizabeth for the first time, and felt her heart grow even though it had long stopped beating. The sun was high in the sky, making the whole area warm if only Katharine could feel it, “When the sun crosses the horizon then it will be time,” Calypso told her, “Destiny will begin to move again.”

“You speak in vague riddles,” Katharine told her, “Could you be clear just for a moment?”

Calypso turned to her and Katharine swore the whole woman’s body shimmered as if made up of droplets of sea rain, “Destiny is always moving, I do not know when it will come for us. For me, for you, but it is coming,” she looked down at Katharine’s belly, “And it starts there.”

Her child? Katharine doubted one birth could change the world so wholly. But a person was a new life, a new start, a new story. And stories Katharine knew could change on a dime. When she had arrived at Port Royal hers had. It had changed so completely. And maybe that was the wheel of destiny that Calypso talked about. That even if it was a drop in the ocean, it caused ripples. So far away one could not see them, but perhaps one day you would feel them. In the rain of the storm that crashed against your ship, or the wave that guided you safely home, “When do I need to leave?”

“Tomorrow.”

That was an answer with no vagaries and it struck through Katharine. Tomorrow. Somewhere in the next few days she would have a child. She would be with James. It seemed like insanity to consider that such a thing had happened in such a long period of time. Here on the deck of The Flying Dutchman time seemed to move at a glacial place, and yet time had moved. Time had drifted between the sails and the rigging. Katharine had new friends now, new stories, and they had carried her through, “I will ask Jean to bring me to shore.”

“We will not talk again for some time,” Calypso told Katharine in such a vague way it gave Katharine a start, “But when we do, please do not hate me so.”

A dusting of mist across her face, and then Calypso was no more.

\---

The next morning, although it was hard to see it as such, their ship arrived at the shores of one of Will’s many lockers. They were small islands, away from The Sea of the Dead. A year ago they had met and saved Jack on one of these lockers, and as Katharine blinked into the sunlight she had to admit she had almost forgotten what it felt like. So few men were cursed these days that they often did not make trips here. Had no reason to yet. But now they finally had reason, and the sun was warm against Katharine’s skin. She marveled at it.

She and Jean were halfway to shore when Katharine began to play. Usually the flute guided her when she did not yet know the song and this time was no different. As if held by a wind not of her own making, her fingers moved along the body of the flute, plucking out note from note and surrounding them with a tune that was far more jaunty than Katharine had been expecting. A tune of coming home and of ‘I’ll see you again’. The type of tune one might play for sailors in a tavern. The song was not one that built to crescendo, but one that danced, until the door was open and it shimmed through into the outside world near the end. As the last note drifted across the sea Katharine turned to say thank you to Jean but found that she was gone.

When she turned back the island in front of her had changed too. A large thing with huge cliffs and a steep wall. Shipwreck Cove. Under her the waves had grown choppy and Katharine grabbed the oars to paddle herself safely through the crack between walls that lead into the inlet that was home to the great pirate fortress. Two ships were docked there. A large and opulent Chinese Junk Ship, and next to it a giant English Man o’ War. Katharine felt her face wet with tears that she had not known she had been keeping inside of her.

Her small boat docked next to The English Rose and she climbed out. As she did something in her belly gently twisted, and Katharine blinked. A nearby pirate glanced her way and said, “Miss, you’ve got a bit of sea water falling down your leg in an odd sort of way.”

Her water. She hadn’t known how little time she had. She grit her teeth and said, “Find me a room. And go get Captain Norrington.”

“Miss I -”

She drew her flute and pointed it at his throat and hoped that he knew it by the legend, “I am not asking.”

“Yes, of course, terribly sorry.”

It seemed that he did know the flute. And the next thing Katharine knew one of his nearest friends was helping her into the fortress to one of the few homes that had a door, and a bed, and helping her lay down upon the pillows there. And god they were comfortable.

\---

The pirates that were helping her were actually able to figure out that she was about to give birth quite quickly. So she was already half-way through the process - a woman who swore she had been some sort of ship's nurse before getting caught up in the life - by Katharine’s side, when the door opened and there was James. Elizabeth standing by his side. Both looked incredibly shocked to see her and Katharine grinned up at them between the sweat, her face flushed, “Hello loves.”

James seemed frozen in a place where it was impossible for him to process what was happening, so he squeaked out a very weak, “Darling?”

Meanwhile Elizabeth got to her knees quickly, taking Katharine’s hand and pressing a kiss to her forehead. Thank god one of them could act rationally, because at that moment rationally feld Katharine’s mind and she screamed loudly in such a way that she was sure the whole fortress could hear her. Whatever it was, that had hurt. She was in pain now. Worse than when she had died. A sharp lancing thing, and she screamed again, “Just take it one breath at a time,” Elizabeth said into her ear and then to James she said, “Other side, other hand, now.”

With the command given, James dropped down onto the other side of the bed and took the hand that Elizabeth had left free, “You always know how to surprise me my love,” he kissed the top of her hand and winced as Katharine squeezed it just a little too tightly.

After that it was a bit of haze. More pain, more grunting, more cries, far too much pushing, and both James and Elizabeth doing their best to keep her brow free of sweat. Then, finally, finally a respite and the woman the pirate had run to get said, “It’s a girl.”

Something wretched grew inside Katharine then as they handed her the child. A week, she would have a week with this child and no more. It seemed so unfair, and impossible. But that was what the sea had granted her, and that was the price Katharine had decided to pay when she had saved James. Staring up into his eyes, and the way he looked at her and the child with wonder, Katharine decided that it had been worth it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Both trying to not pull my punches that a live birth without any prep and anesthesia for pain can hurt, but also trying to not be too graphic at the same time! This chapter has a lot of fun character introductions re: Jean and Ralph. I figured after the battle in At World's End, The Dutchman might be a little empty of crew so I gave Will some new crew mates. We won't see Calypso again for some time and I miss her already ):
> 
> I also love the last bit of Katharine realizing what just one week with her newly born child means, and how much of it is a curse and a blessing. How much she'll miss, but how lucky she is allowed to see anything at all.
> 
> Thank you for reading!


	3. Part 1.3: The Longing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Time passes, the world changes. Katharine watches as Caroline grows up.

James named her Caroline. He said it meant free woman and occasionally, song of happiness. Both of which Katharine felt were apt. After the first day Katharine felt stretched thin. No one in Shipwreck Cove had been ready for a baby to be born in its heart but the pirates did their best to put together a small bassinet made of a traveling crate and as many blankets and pillows they could find. They placed it right next to the bed Katharine had birthed her in. James did his best to dote on her and Elizabeth took upon a lot of the duties he would miss on his ship, including taking care of his rowdy undead.

It was hard work but in the dark of the night, after everything had been finished Elizabeth returned to them and hung her hat up upon one of the rungs of the chair. She sunk down into it and looked over at Katharine and James, who were tucked into each other on the bed, Caroline in the bed that had been made for her. Sleeping soundly, “I don’t know how you do it James,” she told him.

“The ghosts are quite full of an overabundance of spirit aren’t they?” He sighed, “When I’m at sea they only come when called, settled into the parts of the ship that they haunt. It’s when the ship is at port that everything is harder to control.”

“Well I have settled them,” she looked at the baby, still so small and so still, “No crying yet?”

“She’s a fair tempered thing, but my mother told me that those are the ones to watch out for. Loud babies get all their rebellion out of the way early.”

It was as he was speaking that Katharine slowly began to stir and looked up into the wood that made up the ceiling of the building they were in, “We must discuss what will become of her,” she said softly.

Katharine did not want to talk about this, the idea of doing it now when Caroline was still so new to her and had not yet had a proper cry seemed cruel. But she had so few days left and she wanted to make sure that Caroline would be safe. That her child would grow up in such a way that she could be willful and strong. She wanted to give Caroline her best chance at life. The lives they lived were not without peril. The silence of her heart was enough proof of that, “You cannot be considering this now,” James told her askance, “Surely this is something that can be decided later.”

“Calypso gave me one week,” Katharine told them and she watched Elizabeth’s face fall and felt James’ stiffen behind her, “Every birthday she has I can return to her for one week,” she looked up at James and her eyes hardened, “I need to know that she’s safe. Always.”

“She will be,” James promised with a glance up at Elizabeth.

“We swear it,” Elizabeth told her.

“When I was little and my mother died,” Katharine began, “My father had a choice. He could have done a number of things with me but he chose to take me with him on the sea,” she could tell by the way that James’ body continued to tighten he knew what she was going to say next, “We cannot take care of her in the way my father took care of me.”

“You want me to give her up,” he sounded furious.

“No,” Katharine promised, “But I know there are many ladies schools where she will flourish. Until the time comes for her to make up her mind,” her voice did not waiver when she said, “You both know that neither of your ships are the sort of place where a child should grow up nor would they be safe. We are pirates. Not merchants.”

“I will do this for you,” Elizabeth told Katharine and she felt a great deal of pressure lift from her chest.

“Thank you,” she took James’ hand in her own and implored him to see the truth of her words, “Every year on her birthday I will visit and every year you will join us. And she will grow up strong and beautiful, and able to defeat whatever sort of life comes her way. This is not a sad ending for her James, I promise.”

It was not the solution that Katharine wanted. It wasn’t the one she desired, but it was the right decision, no matter what James wanted. So it was decided, and for the next six days Katharine dedicated every second she had to Caroline. So much so that there was hardly any time for James or Elizabeth. Katharine wanted to make sure that the last thing that Caroline felt was that her mother loved her, beyond anything and all else.

On the day that she was to depart, she met James and Elizabeth on the docks. James was holding Caroline in his arms delicately and Katharine's heart ached. She kissed Elizabeth and it lingered. Then James tugged her close and kissed her, Caroline warming the spot between them. When they parted Katharine knelt down and kissed Caroline on the top of her head. A simple thing that conveyed so much that Caroline could not understand, “I love you,” she told the child and then stood up, “A year, wait for me?”

“We will,” Elizabeth paused, “Tell Will I miss him more than words can say but that I will wait for him until he can return to me. His heart is safe, as it will always be in my care.”

“Until the horizon returns him to you,” Katharine said.

Then she stepped into the boat and began to paddle out to sea. She put the flute up to her lips and began to play. Mist encircled her little boat, and she was gone.

\---

The next year seemed to pass slowly. But Katharine did her job as had been assigned. If Will found her staring out into the sea of the dead when they had down time, he did not comment. Jean did her best to keep Katharine from falling into complete despair and it helped. Finally, Will found her in a moment of weakness, when the ship was silent. As they looked out over the waves and leaned onto the rail he said, “I miss them too,” Katharine didn’t have to ask who.

“It’s worse for you,” Katharine knew this, “I feel terrible being so morose when you won’t see Elizabeth again for nine years more.”

“It is the price I am willing to pay for even being able to see her again, she knows this as well as I.”

“I wish I could take you with me,” Katharine told him, “Could you imagine Elizabeth’s face? She’d be so surprised. Then she’d yell at us both for being so stupid.”

“She’d be far too upset to risk it,” Will laughed, “That and the -”

“The fish faces,” Katharine finished.

“Exactly. Could you imagine me with a shark’s face?”

“I think you’d be rather handsome,” Katharine ribbed him, “But we all know Ralph would have the shark face. You’d be squid. Something far more majestic in the eyes of the ocean, but also far too close to Davy Jones for any of us to take you seriously.”

They both broke into smiles when there was a call from the top of the rig, “Straggler port side!” Ralph’s clean voice through their conversation.

Will slapped her on her back, “Back to work it is.”

The talk had helped far more than Jean’s overt hummingbirding. Squaring her shoulders she walked over to the port side to see what Ralph was talking about, and sure enough there was a man smoking a pipe who was staring into the sea like he wanted to jump in instead of letting the current take him. Pulling her flute out of her belt Katharine began to play.

\---

When Katharine met Caroline at one she already knew how to say daddy, and was on the cusp of learning how to say mom or a facsimile of it. She was small and Katharine could still hold her in her arms as one was supposed to. On one of the days that she still had on the shore, James found her outside standing above a cliff face, Caroline in her arms. Staring out over at the sea. He wrapped his arms around her and tucked his head into her shoulder, not saying anything just letting her be. Letting the moment rest.

Caroline at two was different, she could walk, something one of the mistresses at the home said Katharine had only missed by a few weeks after she had last left. Caroline already had foods she liked, the school cook at the house said. Caroline was partial to the taste of oatmeal and would devour any smoked fish as long as it had been deboned for her. She did not like blueberries, which the caretaker found odd, but was willing to overlook since Caroline wasn’t a picky eater. For her birthday they baked her a small oatcake, and Katharine fed it to her daughter in small bites.

At three though, they were sitting in Caroline’s room as James helped her open the presents he had bought her - and promised were not stolen - he swore, when Caroline turned to Katharine and said, “Come back soon?”

Katharine used her arms to push herself closer to her daughter across the floor, and then began to help her with the gift when she said, “As soon as I can. I promise.”

Caroline got a look on her face like she didn’t quite believe it.

At four Caroline met her on the beach when she arrived, and James was already with her. Caroline was beaming - a smile on her face - as she ran up to take Caroline’s hand and oh, her hand was already so big, Katharine thought. She looked like the perfect mix of them, handsome in all the ways that James was handsome with all of the delicate parts of Katharine but none of her mannish features, “Father said that you have important business at sea,” Caroline told her in such strong English, “That’s why it takes so long for you to come home.”

“What else do I say?” James asked her.

“That she’s my birthday present.”

“I do indeed.”

At five James bought - still not stolen he continued to swear - Caroline a fake wooden sword. Together she and Katharine darted around the field in front of the ladies school, trading blows. Elizabeth, who had come to call, watching in amusement. When they were done Caroline’s caretaker didn’t look too pleased, but James had acquired a vast fortune, which was stolen, and the money quieted her mouth rather quickly. At the end of the week Caroline promised that she would be better next time Katharine came around.

When Katharine next visited her at six she had a beautiful compass that Katharine had taken off one of the souls they hadn’t been able to save. As she was handing it to Caroline, her daughter looked up at her and said, “Father told me a scary story about ghosts and ships,” her eyes seemed to say that she liked that it was scary, “Is it all real?” 

Her eyes were so big and Katharine knew what Caroline wanted to hear but knew that her daughter was not ready for that, not quite yet. Caroline was smart, but six was still too small to be hearing stories of murder and high seas mayhem. No matter how rambunctious her teachers said Caroline was. Always abandoning her chores to explore outside. However Katharine was glad that James was slowly already walking Caroline to the truth. Better to prepare her now, instead of sitting on the facts for so long that Caroline would hate them for lying later. As an answer Katharine said, “Do you want it to be true?” 

“The most real,” Caroline grinned up at her. 

“Then it can be true.” 

When Caroline was seven and eight she didn't come down to the ocean to greet Katharine and when Katharine talked with her daughter, their conversations were stilted. Caroline was old enough to be angry at her now, to hold onto it. And her daughter wore her anger well. James consoled her but Katharine didn’t begrudge Caroline the anger. If Katharine had only been able to see her father on her birthday after her father had died, she would have been upset too. They couldn’t wrap the truth up in fancy words anymore.

Elizabeth had decided to join them that eight year, which she didn’t always get to do. Even though her title of Pirate King had begun to fade, she was still captain of her own ship. She had too many pirates to control and her voyages sometimes took her to much further oceans, but this year she said, “If you pushed your next visit out just a little bit, do you think Caroline would be upset?”

Katharine looked at her, “What do you mean?”

Then Elizabeth answered as if it was nothing, as if it didn’t cause Katharine’s whole world to shift upon its axis, in a way she hadn’t been expecting, “Next year is the tenth year.”

Katharine counted the years on her fingers. And then looked up at Elizabeth and realized that Elizabeth was telling the truth. The year she had been pregnant had been such a whirlwind she hadn’t even realized that with that year, and Caroline’s eight they had somehow wandered into the ninth year of Will’s curse. Next year - next year Will would - per the contract, be free. Or some form of freer than he was now. None of them were sure exactly what would happen when the clock turned into the tenth year, “Yes,” Katharine told Elizabeth, “I think I can.”

“We will tell our daughter the truth then,” James dropped the decision on her, “She deserves to know the full extent of who we are.”

There was a soft knock on the door to their drawing room and all three turned to stare at Caroline. She was standing there, a book in her hands. It was an adventure book. Something James had stolen for her. His concern for giving such gifts having slowly sloughed over the years. She glared at Katharine but had seemingly made her mind up about something, “Come and read to me mother.”

Katharine stood, “Always.”

When Caroline took her hand as they walked through the halls of the home Katharine felt an unknown anticipation crawl up her spine.

\---

Exactly one day before year nine turned into year ten, Will gathered Katharine to him along with Bill, Jean, and Ralph. He sat them down and passed around a number of cups and rum from a barrel that Katharine had brought back last year and he had not let anyone touch, saving it specifically for this day, “Calypso visited me in a dream last night,” he told them pouring the rum into the cups, “She says I am to still ferry the dead,” Katharine opened her mouth to speak but Will held up his hand so she shut it and let her captain continue to speak, “However, we are no longer cursed forever to The Sea of the Dead. As long as we do the work, we can come and go from this world to the above as much as we please.”

That wasn’t exactly what Katharine had been expecting but, “So we’re free?”

“More or less,” he shrugged, “But I’d like to keep the rest of you on anyway. If you’d have me.”

“Well, it’s not like I have anything better to do,” Ralph laughed.

“And someone has to make sure that the crew doesn’t get too rambunctious,” Jean grinned at him.

Neither Bill or Katharine answered, and she knew that Will noticed but let it slide. The next morning as their boat crested above the waves and started the long sail to where Caroline was, Katharine noticed that Bill was gone. She didn’t say anything but shared a look with Will that said that if he needed her, she would be with him till the end in this endeavor. After so long, where else would she go?

\---

That night Katharine sat next to her daughter on the floor, as the flame cackled behind them. Will and Elizabeth sat on the seat behind them and James sat just a little ways away with a drink in his hand. Across from him Jack spun a coin on the table between them. It felt surreal, it had been so long since they had all shared the same space. But Katharine hoped that that it would be the start of something resembling stability, as much as the life of a pirate could offer. With warm eyes she turned to look at Caroline and said, “Do you remember that story your father told you?”

“You mean the best story he’s ever told?” Caroline asked.

James coughed at his daughter’s words, “Would you like to hear it again knowing it’s true?” Katharine followed.

Her daughter closed the book she was reading, the words forgotten, “Yes,” Caroline’s grin made the warmth of the fire seem trivial.

So Katharine began to speak. Of course as she spoke, everyone in the room did their best to interrupt the tale, interjecting their own form of truth. However from her place on the floor Katharine could see that Caroline was enamored. Like she had been waiting her whole life to hear this story. The story of the ocean, pirates, longing, and love.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is where the "fix-it for the fix-it" part of the story generally ends. Everyone free, and living their pirate lives. I think it's a rather sweet ending although very different from the films. I especially love Bill staying just long enough to see his son free, and then deciding to finally move on (and Will being the one to see him off). 
> 
> There will be a few more Katharine POV chapters later on, but not for a bit. Now we get to know Caroline who I love with all my heart, and who has her own adventures to go on. 
> 
> Starting with chapter I think I'm going to go back to Friday/Monday posting instead of Friday/Wednesday/Monday posting but we'll see how long that lasts lmao.
> 
> Thank you for reading!


	4. Part 1.4: The Seals

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> At thirteen Caroline longs for freedom.

The school for ladies was a strong bricked thing that sat just a little up a hill that overlooked the ocean. It had been there for many years and would be there for many years more. The door to the school led to a dirt road that by walking for about fifteen minutes took one into a small town. The town was a well to do little thing that was protected from ships thanks to the fact that it was just far enough inland that any pirates or other forces would have to travel a small distance to actually reach it, if they chose to come in by the beaches. Which was not as easy as it seemed on the surface. For there was no place for boats to dock at the beach that the people lived near either. It was a beach made more for pleasure and lounging than docking and trade. Which the people of the small town did often and in spades.

For the past thirteen years this school had been Caroline’s home. It had not been a choice she had been allowed, but one foisted upon her by her parents. One that she sometimes disagreed with. However there was no arguing with her father or mother when their minds were set. She was young but she had friends in the town they had said - later - when she was old enough she could join them if she wanted. If she was willing to give up everything she had built here. When she had been nine, when this choice had been made for her she had argued it. Her parents would need her out at sea. But her parents had only shared a fond look that Caroline knew now was humor. Not at her expense, not really, but also wholly charmed by her. They had been right of course.

But sometimes the sea whispered to her while she slept. Sometimes it spoke to her in tongues, and the whistle of the wind against the sand made her regret it. Just a little bit. Even if she knew she shouldn’t. A nine year old, she knew, was not made for a seafarer's life or a pirate’s. Caroline was impressed her mother had managed somehow. Maybe someday later, when she was older. When her skills with a sword were as good as Elizabeth’s or could at least match her father’s stalwart style. Plus, she was thirteen now and as such could do whatever she wanted. The world was her oyster. And the ocean still called.

She climbed over the rock in front of her and looked down at the boy who was climbing up behind her. His parents, according to him, for Caroline had not met them, were a lord and lady both and employed by The Crown. Caroline sometimes envied him, but mostly she felt sad for him. To be beholden to something as absolute as England seemed awful. And she could see sometimes in the way Peter ranted at her, that he disliked parts of it too. Peter wanted more freedom too, Caroline thought, “Hurry up Peter! We’re going to miss the seals and then I’ll be late for class again.”

Her tutor was very strict when she missed class but she had a feeling the stern woman would be far less aggressive if she knew that Caroline had befriended a lord from London. She was the only one who had after all. But the women at the school only knew Peter as the boy that followed Caroline everywhere, “These rocks are impossible Caro, why can’t we just go back into town and drink tea like everyone else?”

Caroline hated almost everyone else. Most people in town whispered about her parents and looked down on her because they were convinced that she was the child of pirates. This was true of course, but they didn’t really know that and just assumed. Her parents had done a good job of hiding what they were when they came to visit. So the assumption really might have been Caroline’s fault for arguing with that man in the bookshop. He had been talking about charts and his adventures, and had mixed up the location of two very important Caribbean Islands. She hadn’t been able to let that stand. Idiot, “The seals might not be there tomorrow!”

“They were there yesterday!”

They had been there yesterday, and the day before, but Caroline loved watching them bathe in the sun. She longed to bathe in the sun like they did. To not have to worry about boring school, “That hardly matters,” Caroline said, “What if they are not there tomorrow? That means we would have missed one day of seals.”

“We do not need to see them everyday Caro,” Peter groused.

But Caroline wanted to see them every day. They were a good reminder to her that there was something out there beyond the horizon. Always shifting and moving. Sand drifting through her fingers, “If we miss a day I’ll be put out,” she said, “And then you will feel bad when you next see me.”

She was not beyond a little bit of blackmail and she heard Peter grumble behind her. Which was as good as a yes. They continued forward until they came upon a small beach filled with rocks and high cliffs. And there sunbathing, as Caroline had pictured, were the seals. She crouched down in the bush, her dress catching on the leaves, leaving a small tear that went completely ignored. Peter joined her a few seconds later and stared out over at the animals, “Okay I admit this is still pretty cool.”

“I told you,” she grinned, “You say that every time we come to see them.”

“I do, I do.”

One of the seals barked and Caroline watched as a few of them rolled over and began to beat their bellies. The sounds mixed together in harmonious chaos, the melody of the sea. Her mother said that the melody was the same as the sound of her flute even though one sometimes made you want to dance a jig. Listening to the rhythm all around them, Caroline agreed.

\--

Peter said goodbye to her at the place where the school’s path diverged back into town and Caroline walked the five minutes back to the building that had been her home for the past thirteen years. With very little trepidation she pushed the door to the building open and was greeted by a young girl her age who had her hair back in ribbons, and who wore a dress that was far less expensive than the one that Caroline wore. But Caroline’s dress was stolen she knew deep down and the dress that this girl was wearing was not. Their bounties of wealth were different. Nora was the daughter of a true naval officer, a Commodore like Caroline’s father had been once upon a time. Nora’s father always sent her gifts and they were always beautiful for what he could afford, and Caroline appreciated that. Nora was, despite everything, Caroline’s second best friend. After Peter of course, “Your dress!” Nora exclaimed as a greeting, “It’s ripped right down the side.”

Caroline looked down and sure enough, there was a large tear down the side of her dress. She hadn’t even noticed it happening, “It will be fine,” she told Nora, “I will give it to the house seamstress for repair.”

“You know what The Headmistress said,” Nora told her and Caroline remembered, “How are you going to explain this away?”

The Headmistress’s words had been rather biting. Any other sort of play that ruined Caroline’s dresses and she would be confined to her room and not allowed out for the weekend. When she was little, it was easier to ignore the sort of play that Caroline got up to. Brush it aside as something she would grow out of. How she would come home covered in mud, sand sticking to her feet. The bruises and scrapes that decorated her body. Caroline had marks on her knees that she wore with pride. However now that she was older she had a standard to live up to, according to everyone. It sounded terribly barbaric to Caroline, “Come help me change before she notices,” Caroline demanded, “Then we can hide the dress.”

“But you loved that dress!” Nora seemed far more depressed than her, “When your father brought it last month you were so excited.”

She had been more excited to see her father than about the dress but Nora did not need to know that. Instead she took Nora by the hand and tugged her up the stairs to the living quarters, “Come on.”

They were almost to Caroline’s room when there was the sound of a cough behind them. Shit. Caroline though the word before her mind could take it back. Her father and mother said it quite a lot. Aunt Elizabeth even more. Will only occasionally. They told her not to say such words unless she meant them, but it was too late. The thought was in her head. She grinned up at The Headmistress with such a smile that her father said was blinding, “That’s quite a tear in your dress Caroline,” the woman glanced down at her skirt.

“It caught on the banister,” Caroline told her, “I was so excited to see Nora when I arrived back at the school, that I hadn’t even noticed.”

Her parents were paragons of truth among pirates - but their one flaw - which was lying to anyone else who wasn’t, had become hard baked inside Caroline. When people at the house asked what her parents did it was so easy for Caroline to lie and say that they were merchants. The only person who knew the truth in bits and pieces was Peter but that was because he had overhead his father talking about Jack Sparrow once, and Elizabeth’s name had come up. It had been impossible to lie to him then, “Where it tore is of little consequence,” The Headmistress told her, “A weekend is a weekend,” she looked at Nora, “Please return Caroline to her room and do try to talk some sort of sense into your friend.”

Nora dipped in a small bow, “Of course.”

Caroline groaned. But The Headmistress’ rigid word was law. Nora took her hand and led a very put out Caroline into her room. As Caroline considered how everything had gone wrong, all she could think was that she was going to miss the seals, and that they would be gone by the time the weekend was over.

\---

Late in the afternoon during her entrapment, Caroline refused to call it anything else, Nora came to her room. Caroline had stripped out of her dress and was wearing a set of pants, and a loose white shirt. In front of her she was knocking the sword her mother had brought her last time she had been ashore, against a pole that Will had set up in her room. It wouldn’t exactly work as real practice, but it was still good to get used to holding a sword and knowing how it fit in one’s hand. Her mother had told Caroline so, sitting on the bed and watching as Will installed the pole. It also improved foot work, Elizabeth had commented looking over at Caroline from charts she had unfurled only once they were safe in Caroline’s room, “Peter came to visit,” Nora told her, “He wanted to go see the seals again but I informed him that you could not.”

Caroline put the sword down on her bed, “Did you tell him that it’s all the stupid headmistress’s fault?”

“I told him that you ripped your dress and she reprimanded you just as she said she would,” Nora sighed, “Soon we’re going to be young ladies, Caroline we need to do our best to appear as such.”

“I can do young lady,” Caroline told her, “It’s just not very fun. Or interesting.”

“Being a young lady isn’t always fun,” Nora told her, “But it will help us in the long run if what The Headmistress says is true.”

“All I want is to do whatever I wish whenever I wish it,” Caroline said, “I do not see how she doesn’t understand that.”

“And if you marry a lord, then you will,” Nora told her, “Can’t you at least try?”

Marrying a lord did not sound like freedom. Hardly at all. But Caroline was not going to get out of this one, “I can try.”

“That’s all she asks.”

Caroline let out a long drawn upon sigh. She didn’t want Nora to be right, but if it made The Headmistress kinder Caroline could pretend. Her mother said that Caroline was very good at pretend, and that people who knew nothing about the high seas were very stupid, and very good at falling for pretend. A plan began to formulate in her mind. Small and then growing larger and larger as the night wore on.

\---

At the start of the week, Caroline met Peter at the end of the road and he looked downtrodden, his hands in his pockets, back hunched over. She raised an eyebrow, “Are you okay Peter?”

“I went to see the seals without you yesterday,” he kicked a rock, “It seemed like something you would want me to do. But they were gone.”

Ah. Well, that was her punishment completed then it seemed. Caroline frowned. But then remembered what she had told herself back inside her room. Pretend, pretend until she couldn’t anymore. Until the world could hardly tell the difference between her and the lady next to her. She would be so good in fact that only her parents, and the pirates she loved would see her true face. Then when she was older she would leave this place - when it would be her the world would need protecting from - that was when she would drop the mask, “It’s okay Peter,” Caroline told him, “I’m just happy that you went. Someone needed to go.”

“What did you do with Caroline? I thought you would be furious.”

“I’m not angry at all Peter. I am trying something new,” she said.

“Something new?”

Because Peter knew who she was, she could be honest with him, “I do not think people like me very much Peter, because of who my parents are or because I’m… willful? That’s the word The Headmistress uses.”

“I like you very much Caroline,” Peter said with a cheeky smile.

“And that’s why I like you,” Caroline returned his cheekiness with a bit of her own.

So there was another person that Caroline could be honest in front of. There were allies, her mind provided. When you are surrounded by enemies, her mother had told her recounting the story of how they had bested Cutler Beckett, it is good to surround yourself with as many friends as one could. Even when your numbers are thin. And Caroline did love friends. So Caroline took Peter’s hand and the two of them walked into town together. Seals forgotten, for now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The first chapter from Caroline's POV. It's also one of the first chapters where there are basically only original characters and the pirate characters are only mentioned in passing. This isn't a pattern but it does set the stage for how this story will be told from this point on. Or at least for sometime. Next chapter will finally set the true plot into motion. 
> 
> When it comes to personality I think Caroline is more of a dreamer than her mother, but she's also far more of a forceful personality, which I think comes off here.
> 
> Thank you for reading!


	5. Part 1.5: The Girl

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> At sixteen, Caroline finds her sea legs.

The man in front of her was so terribly boring, Caroline decided. He was talking about his home, and how well he cared for it. How beautiful the flowers were and how grand the garden was. She was trying to pay attention, really she was. But Caroline wanted to fall asleep. She was currently in Penzance on the dime of Peter, who had promised her a good time. However they had run into a family friend. Which really meant the son of people who were friends with Peter’s parents.

The friend had been instantly smitten with Caroline. Despite not knowing anything about her. Caroline on the other hand, had not. He had asked her to tea, which Peter swore was really him asking her on a date, and while Caroline had wanted to say no Peter had implored her to at least try. And Caroline hated letting Peter down. So here she was in a small tea house that overlooked the shore as merchant ships came into the port and this man - this - Elias, talked her ear off. For her own part Caroline thought she was doing a good job of appearing interested, “I think you’ll like the roses best,” Elias was saying as if Caroline was going to go home with him to meet his parents, “They match your fair complexion.”

That was how Caroline knew he was full of shit. And her brain no longer pretended that it was turned off by thinking that word. Caroline did not have a fair complexion. Her mother and father had always been honest with her about what the color of her skin meant. How they had given her the best chance they could. How no one could, or should ever talk down to her about it. Their stolen money protected her, and so did her relationship with Peter, but that could only go so far. At least among those who considered themselves civilized. There was a little bit more freedom among those who called themselves pirates, but only just, “Elias,” Caroline took his hands in his, “This had been a wonderful time,” a lie, “But I’m afraid that Peter requested I come back early. Something about not quite trusting me with men yet.”

It was always easier to blame herself, Caroline had learned. Men liked that. Most men anyway. Her father hated it. So did Will. Most pirate men, Caroline had discovered, had less issue with women who could punch them in the face, as long as they were allowed to punch back. And she preferred that. Although that was not to say that she always wanted to punch people. It was the contrast of it really. Not that Elias would ever know, “Are you sure?” He seemed rather put upon, fake pout and all, “Maybe Peter wants you all for himself? Maybe you’re afraid to displease him.”

The Headmistress had implied something of the sort when Caroline had asked for leave in order to go to Penzance. Caroline thought this was rather idiotic, but the thought had not been able to leave her head since. If Peter wanted her for himself he should just say so. It wasn’t like Caroline found him displeasing. In fact his smile did cause her heart to flutter, just a little bit. But Peter was a lord heir and Caroline was a pirate, and one could not be two things, as her father and aunt Elizabeth were proof of. He would have to choose her, not the other way around. Caroline had no desire to change who she was just to be with him, “Isn’t Peter your friend?” Caroline asked, “Isn’t it unwise to speak of a lord heir apparent like he is some thoughtless brute? Who cannot control his own desires? His own wants?”

That seemed to bring a halt to whatever Elias was going to say next, “Well,” he stood, “I suppose that’s the end of this engagement. I do so hope that when I next see you, you and Peter are happy.”

The way he spoke, the last of his words were so full of venomous poison that Caroline knew that he did not mean what he said at all. Instead of being rude, because she knew that would end up with her in a far more terrible situation, Caroline only said, “I hope so as well,” polite courtesy could sometimes sting worse than a punch to the face, “I hope you have a wonderful rest of your day.”

He marched from the tea house with all his dignity attached and Caroline watched him go. He had already paid for the food so for the next half hour she sat there eating the rest of the finger food and enjoying a few next cups of tea. It wasn’t exactly stealing but it was close and she thought her aunt Elizabeth would be proud. When she was done Caroline stepped into the street and looked out over the harbor. As she did a ship caught her attention. It was a large thing for a Tall Ship. Decorated with real and false English flags. She knew the ship instantly from her mother’s stories of the ships that they had encountered over the past few years. Its captain had gotten his start young it was said, and over the years had already started to make a terrifying name for himself using Nassau port as a base. Although the current rumor was that he had been tossed out of Nassau for some reason undisclosed to her.

Her mother and Elizabeth had met him when he was young, they had told her. Just a boy on the cusp of something. They didn’t know if he would recognize them if he saw them now they had also said, but he would recognize the name Elizabeth Swann. The name James Norrington. He was of the old guard, despite his younger age. The sort of man who knew of magic, and Calypso, and monsters that were not human.

So here, standing on the hill, there was no mistaking the ship named The Adventure. Currently the flag ship of one Edward Teach. It stuck out like a black thumb if you knew what to look for. Most of the people in the port town of Penzance would of course have no idea what to look for. Port towns in England were highly protected, and didn’t have much interaction with pirates. Compared to many of the ports in The Americas. It was much harder to attack England directly, her father said, and having been here for sixteen years now Caroline believed him. She marked the ship in her head and continued down the street to the home she and Peter were staying in with his parents.

\---

The home was a grand thing with a lovely little garden out front. It was nowhere near as big as Peter’s true home just outside of London, but here in a small port town one didn’t need a big home, just something that had enough wealth to prove that you were above everyone else. And the brick home that Peter’s parents had decided to stay in surely said this. Caroline was still considering the overabundance of wealth as she entered and one of the ladies maids scurried up to her, surprised to see her home so soon, “How was your time out miss?”

Everyone knew what she had been doing then. It was hard to hide comings and goings in a house such as this, “I don’t think I will be seeing Elias again,” she sighed, “He made such disparaging comments about the Lord Peter.”

That too would travel and would hopefully land somewhere next to Peter’s parents. If they found out that Peter had been mocked in such away it surely would not stand. If they heard it from Caroline she was sure that they would think that she was lying. It wasn’t that they hated her, it was just that like Peter they knew that she came from pirate stock and as such they did not completely trust her. Which made them smarter than a number of the other families around the area. She untied her hat and handed to the maid, “I will be going to see Peter, do you know where he is?”

“I believe he is out in the garden.”

“Thank you.”

Caroline passed through the house, and through the drawing room in the back of the house until she reached the paito that overlooked the rear garden. Peter was on the lawn, dressed down in a simple loose white shirt, and pants tucked into boots. His jacket had been placed on one of the chairs on the paito and Caroline stopped in the door to admire him. He was walking through the paces of sword work. Something that he had to perfect and was supposed to practice, on his father’s own word. It wouldn’t do for the lord’s heir apparent to not know how to swing a sword and yet, “If you lunge like that you’ll find a blade between your ribs. Aim straight and true,” Caroline told him from the porch, a smile upon her face.

Peter turned to look at her, “Would you like to show me how it’s done?”

“With pleasure,” Caroline picked up the sword he had so kindly left next to his jacket and joined him in the garden, “Expecting me home early?”

“Elias is a prat,” Peter told her, “No one can stand to be in his company for more than a number of minutes. I may have assumed.”

Caroline stepped into position, squaring her feet on the grass. They began to trade sword strokes along with words, “He insulted you,” she told him, “But that’s beside everything. There is a pirate ship in the harbor,” she blocked his downward stroke with a quick parry, “I plan to be on it.”

Instead of faltering Peter pressed a small advantage that Caroline had left open for him, “How do you know it’s a pirate ship?”

“My parents told me about it some years ago, and it matches their descriptions,” Caroline countered his advantage, a trap she had left for him and he had fallen into easily, “I might not get a chance like this again.”

“And where will he take you?” Peter asked, countering her counter swiftly and with no quarter.

“To Tortuga I think. It has grown even stronger as a pirate stronghold over the years. From there who knows. I just want to leave England behind, if I’m honest. Explore the world, maybe try to find my parents.”

The steel of their swords clashed together, “And you plan to do this alone?”

“Why, are you going to come?”

She hadn’t expected Peter to be this interested in her attempts to flee to sea, and her distraction allowed him to press in closer than she should have allowed. A few quick taps and she had moved him back away from her, but she could feel something between them growing. Something that had been growing since she had first seen him peering into one of the shops back in the small town where the school had been. He had been staring at a compass and Caroline had just gotten a small bit of coin from her parents and had bought it for him without thinking about who he was or who she was, “A woman should not be on the high seas alone.”

Caroline hit his sword away from her with a strong forceful blow and he staggered away from her, “Elias was right!” she stabbed her sword in the ground, fight forgotten, “You do want me all to yourself.”

He stared at her, chest heaving, “And would that be so bad?”

“No,” Caroline answered softly as he approached her, “That would not be so bad.”

Peter’s lips were soft, Caroline discovered. He was a kind kisser, who sought only to please, and Caroline found that she greatly enjoyed that. Enjoyed the way he courted her so. As he lowered her onto the ground Caroline thought that his parents would be furious. But that thankfully, the two of them would not be around to find out.

\---

Pirate ships liked to depart ports that were not safe to pirates at night, Jack had told her. It had been one of the rare times he had come to visit, but it had also been her tenth birthday, and somehow her aunt had strong armed him into making an appearance. She had been sitting on his lap as he told her a number of ridiculous stories that Caroline was still not sure to this day if they were true or not. But some of the wisdom had stuck and that was part of it. They did this, Jack had said, so that they do not draw attention when they leave. A pirate ship only has a limited amount of time in a port that does not expect them, because eventually someone will know, no matter how much the ship tries to disguise itself. A day or two at most.

So Caroline had dressed in borrowed clothing from one of the male servants who had a frame closest to hers, and Peter had dressed in clothing that made him look like a common deck boy. They had walked down to the port rather safely considering the high moon, and now they stood in front of the dinghies that meant to push out to sea, while a number of men scurried around the deck trying to put things away so they could leave the port quickly. As she approached they stopped and stared at her. One of them, a short stocky man with broad shoulders stepped forward. “Who goes?”

“I am here to entreat your Captain for a ride to Tortuga port.”

The man stared at her, “That’s a pirate town, and we are merchants.”

“You are surely not,” Caroline told him, “The flag your ship sails under, belongs to that of Edward Teach does it not?”

He narrowed his eyes and then let out a below, “Captain, there’s a girl here saying your name as if it belongs in her mouth.”

A man with the darkest beard that Caroline had ever seen hauled himself from one of the boats, his shoulders rippling as he did, and Caroline became very glad that Peter had let her do most of the talking. This was the sort of person her father said would, in no certain terms, eat a lord alive. He had no kindness in his eyes for the simple people of England anymore. She wondered if coming here then, had been done to spit in the eye of The Crown. As if to say - look what I got away with right under your nose. Caroline squared her shoulders as he began to talk, “And what sort of girl would come to call on my ship so late at night, or does she not know what I do to people like her?”

Well then, Caroline hoped that Peter still wanted to come with her after all of this. Because as an answer she said, “My name is Caroline Norrington. My father is the Captain of The English Rose, my mother sails under the banner of William Turner. Elizabeth is my aunt and second mother by right. I am requesting passage to Tortuga.”

There was a pause and then whispers among the crew, “A lot of those things are just stories now miss,” Teach told her, “Murmurs.”

Caroline knew this too. Her parents, Will and Elizabeth, had done their best to turn their stories into myths and legends. It was easier for them to sneak under the nose of The English that way, and those that knew only talked about in hushed words. As if they were just fairy tales in a book. A time would come, when the book would have to be opened again, but for today it remained closed and most of the magic was gone, “But you remember,” she said, “The night on the boat. When you met them.”

“Some,” he knew as much as he was willing to say aloud, “To Tortuga you said?”

“To Tortuga.”

It seemed that they were in accord then. With a flourish he revealed one of the rowboats to her and as she walked up it Peter said to her under his breath, “What was that about?”

“Negotiations,” Caroline told him.

Peter seemed rather confused, but he joined her on the seat of the dinghy. About an hour later, stock accounted for, Caroline set sail for the first time in her life since she had been a baby ferried onto shore by Elizabeth and her father. At the first bump of the wave, it felt more like coming home than anything ever had. Caroline grinned into the wind as it tousled her hair and carried her forward.

END PART ONE

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Edward Teach appearing out of nowhere once again ready to hold this crossover together using duct tape and sheer will. I like to imagine this happens only a few months after Eleanor kicks him out of Nassau, so at first he sees Caroline and just thinks "oh god not another kid like Vane" and then when he learns who she is, thinks "well okay fine". And decides to help her even when it's against his better judgement. I also like to think him going to England is some need to prove himself again, especially after he lost Nassau. 
> 
> This chapter also does some very small things re: Peter's status as a lord heir v Caroline's status as a pirate princess. Where his lordship gets him all these things in England but only Caroline's status will get them on the ship. They are both heirs but of very different things.
> 
> Thanks for reading!


	6. Part 2.1: The Girl and The Crew

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Caroline tries to not ruffle the feathers of the men on Teach's pirate crew.

Working on a ship was harder than Caroline had assumed in her head. Her mother hadn’t made it sound easy exactly, but her mother had told her stories of The Dutchman and her father had given her lessons while they were anchored, so Caroline had assumed everything would be second nature to her. On the first day Caroline’s hands cracked after helping with the rig and Teach offered her no kindness, only a number of cloth scraps, with words to wrap them, and to continue the work. Peter had it harder and Caroline wondered the first few nights if he regretted coming with her, but he never said a word. Instead he allowed her to help him as he worked through the complicated rig for the first time, and figured out which knots did what best. By the second day the cloth that Tech had given her had already grown wet with blood, so she tore up parts of her shirt and used that instead.

The other thing that Caroline had not expected was how hard it was to sleep in a hammock. How the constant swinging would drive her to wakefulness. Peter seemed to have no issue with it, falling asleep instantly after a hard day's work but Caroline found it dreadful and on the second night she climbed out of it and out onto the deck. She walked to the bow of the ship and let the wind make a mess of her hair. Despite the early hardship, Caroline loved this feeling and wondered how she had ever convinced herself that this wasn’t what she had always wanted. Footfalls brought Teach up next to her and for a moment they sat there in silence until he said, “Most of the men don’t know about the early days of the account. What we had to do just to get a foothold in this world, how we fought with the goddess of the sea,” he continued to look out over the waves, “It’s better that way.’

“What if we need the magic?”

“Then we will work to forget all over again” that didn’t sound particularly interesting, “It is easier for pirates to exist in this world if England believes us just a little toothless.”

“Surely you can’t be happy that way?”

It didn’t sound like he was happy about it, “No one is really happy about it that way,” he snorted, “But it’s better than England sending all her ships down to bear on us just because they remember that there is more to be used against them besides cannons.”

Caroline turned so she was looking over the deck, back leaning against the rail, and sighed, “I suppose,” and then she said, “I’ve honestly missed a fair deal,” she held up her bandaged hands as proof, “I didn’t grow up at sea, my parent’s decision, and I knew there were things my parents were not telling me, but I didn’t know how much or what was being left out.”

“Parents will do a great deal to protect their children, no matter how their children wrong them,” Teach said, “Don’t hold it against them princess.”

That made Caroline blister, “I’m not a princess.”

“Your mother is the lover of Pirate King Swann isn’t she?”

“If what you told me is true, Elizabeth is hardly a King anymore. Only in legend. And the way you say lover is so crass.”

“Pirates are a crass people,” He pulled himself away from the rail, “Go to bed. We have a long journey ahead of us and a tried crew works to no Captain’s favor.”

She watched him retreat into the bowel of the ship and followed him down a few minutes later. It took her a few hours to fall asleep after that, and soon morning was upon her far too quickly.

\---

It was mid-day and the sun was beating high overhead. Caroline had already finished her mornings work helping with the mainsail, and the quartermaster had sent her down into the galley to eat. The food wasn’t good of course, but a bit of bread was still a bit of bread, and ham was ham, and best of all clean water was clean water. As she was pulling off a bit of the bread Peter sat down next to her holding a cup and a plate that had the same breadstock that Caroline was eating and a dollop of something that looked like beans, “Where did you get the beans?”

“The cook was just finishing them as I arrived,” he stared at her, “I’d rather have your ham.”

“Swap?”

He nodded and they switched plates, digging into each other’s meals, “The ham isn’t half bad,” he put a slice of it in between his bread.

Caroline laughed causing a few of the crew to look at her, reminding her that everything she did now was scrutinized. She sobered before looking back at Peter, “I know why you said you came with me, but that can’t be all right? I hardly imagine this is the sort of life you imagined or wanted when you were growing up.”

“My maid read me adventure books as a child, to my determinant I think,” he answered, “When I met you I was already chafing at the ropes that held me to the ground.”

“Are you saying I was an excuse?”

“God no,” he reached over to cover her hand with his - and that - the crew around them definitely noticed, “never that.”

She squeezed his hand, “Good.”

There was a yell from the top deck, something that sounded like Caroline’s name and also something about how the sail needed a second tie. Quickly Caroline ate the rest of her food and scrambled back up to the deck to help with whatever had gone wrong after she had left it as it was. As she did so - she could not ignore the eyes that followed her. The men of this ship were watching her, and if they thought her any sort of weak they would pounce. This was a different sort of ship than the one that her parents ran, she would have to be careful. So would Peter. Blood was in the water.

\---

Ten days after they had arrived on The Adventure - a name she thought was a little pedestrian - Caroline had told Peter one night quietly, a small secret between them, Caroline’s hands were finally starting to callus. They were just small things, and they hardly mattered thanks to the sting of the cuts that had not yet healed, but Caroline felt they were something of a mark of pride. Peter’s hands too were a match for hers. Hands that she held under the table while they ate, where no one could see. She knew that Peter hated it, but it kept them safe. Or more importantly it kept her safe. Peter on the other hand was already blending in with the men. They seemed to enjoy his tall tales, stories from the books he had told her about, hanging onto every word.

Above them the night crew worked to get the boat ready for its continued sail. Just because the moon hung in the sky did not mean that the job was completely done, “And then the man stabbed the queen!” Peter was saying, the men listening in, one of them having his elbow deep into the potato mush that counted for food, “And the rest you shall have to wait for tomorrow.”

A cry went up amongst the crew but the end of Peter’s stories usually meant that dinner was over. With a sigh the men began to clear the tables bringing the cups, plates, and forks into the small kitchen for the poor cook to clean with what little soap and water he had. Caroline helped and was about to step back into the main section of the galley when Peter tugged her further into the kitchen and into a small nook where food was stored, away from view, “Peter!”

“I know that it’s hard for you, with these men, but I want to kiss you. I haven’t been able to since we left the apartment,” his eyes sparkled, “If I kiss you here, quickly, will you pull away?”

“You’re a fool Peter,” Caroline told him but went up onto her tiptoes to kiss him lightly, “But you are my fool.”

Kiss exchanged like a gift, something to be shared in the crannies where people could not touch them, Caroline let her body leave Peter there. A touch of hands. As she left she saw a number of men look her way but she ignored them.

\---

Another night and another failure to sleep. It was getting easier, and sometimes Caroline was so worn out by the day that sleep came instantly. But today had been easier work. The ship hadn’t needed much to keep going - wind as kind as it was. With a sigh she crept from her hammock and wandered up to the top deck where stars littered the sky. She walked over to one of the rails as she did when she couldn’t sleep and looked out over the sea. They would still be traveling at least fifteen more days Teach had yelled to the crew during one of his many appearances on deck. The shifting of the wood grain behind her, told Caroline that someone was approaching and she turned expecting it to be Teach. The two of them had almost made it a habit of meeting at the rail at night.

Instead it was one of the men who had continued to watch her in the galley. She breathed. Well, it would be better to deal with this now instead of later when they were closer to the end of the voyage, “May I help you kind sir?”

“It seems a little unfair that one man gets a claim to you when we are all starving out here in the ocean.”

“There is still plenty of water in the barrels below,” she jokingly told him.

“Now you know that’s not what I’m talking about.”

She knew, but she had hoped to disarm him, “Are you sure? Because it’s the only thing you will be drinking otherwise.”

He reached out to grab at her wrist but she caught his hand and then he slapped her across the face. It stung, but it was far preferable to anything else. Instead of slapping him back she slugged him like Elizabeth had taught her to. Thumb on the outside, tucked against her knuckles. The man seemed a little shocked that she had hit him back and he glowered, made to punch her in return when there was the sound of a clearing throat, “Now I’m trying to sleep like any decent man when my quartermaster comes to me and says that there is fighting on the main deck. Now, men do need to get their blows out, I do not begrudge them this, but this was not the fight I was expecting I must admit.”

Caroline didn’t say anything but the crew member seemed dead set on proving his innocence in it all, “Captain -”

“Tomorrow the two of you will have it out in front of the crew, whatever this is, and things will be settled when we have a victor. That is all.”

Teach turned to leave before the disgruntled crew member could say anything, and when the crew member turned back to give Caroline a piece of his mind, she was already halfway down the stairs returning to her hammock. If that was what Teach wished - so be it.

\---

“What’s the reason for this duel?”

Teach walked above them as further below on the gun deck, Caroline tested the balance of the sword she would be using. It had been made by Will so she trusted its strength, but it had been some time since she had used it in one-on-one combat. She swung it a few times, readjusting to a sword that had been made for her, compared to the utility sword she used at Peter’s home, “Women are made for sharing,” the man in front of her said, “Seems wrong to get punched just for saying the truth.”

“Women are not rations, nor prizes from plundered ships,” Caroline told him and her comment made the rest of the crew laugh, “Thus the punch.”

Peter was leaning over the rail to look down on them and he seemed a little worried, but it was too late to go back on this. Not when Teach had been so insistent last night, “Please remember this is not a duel to the death. We are merely settling differences,” Teach warned.

“And they shall be settled,” Caroline’s opponent said.

The crew member lunged and Caroline parried his sword. For a few minutes they traded blows trying to get the measure of each other. Things were tense but soon Caroline was able to recognize patterns in his fighting, which side he favored when he went in for blows, if he would rather aim high than low, how the grip of his sword changed his lunges. The next time he came in, Caroline parried his sword in such a way that she sent him off balance, and then she hit him on the hip with the flat of her sword. A hard solid knock, “I think I have an idea of you now,” Caroline returned.

From then on they continued to fight and at every opportunity that she got Caroline was able to hit him with the flat of her sword until she was sure that there were bruises all over his body. He had gotten one good hit on her with the blade of his sword - he was far less lenient than she was - but it had been a glancing blow to her non-dominant sword arm. It bled, but not intensely.

Finally after a great deal of back and forth Caroline saw it, and hit him as hard as possible on the inside of his forearm. Nicked him just a little bit with the edge of her sword. He cried out in shock, and his fingers loosened around the blade. With a flick she hit him in the same spot again, leaving another small cut, and the blade dropped to the ground. He dove to grab it but Caroline kicked it out of the way and into the cannons, “Tiny bitch.”

She had never heard that word directed at her that way, but she did not let her eyes leave him when she pointed her sword at his belly and yelled up to Teach, “This woman is not made for sharing, I am free to make my own choices, are we clear?”

“Clear as the sea,” Teach called down to her, “This matter is settled.”

There was a cry from the men and then Peter climbed down to join her at the lower deck, “No more kissing in the kitchen,” she told him.

“No more kissing in the kitchen,” he answered.

As he kissed her there in front of the whole crew Caroline was very glad that the man who had decided to make his first move on her had been so slight and so young. It wasn’t that she didn’t trust her own skills, but she knew that if it had been an older man with more experience under his belt the fight could have gone south for her very quickly. She let her head rest against Peter’s shoulder. Maybe her mother’s luck had rubbed off on her in someway. Whatever it was, Caroline was glad to have the rest of the matter settled. There were so many more days to go, and peace was such a welcome reprieve.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I see Caroline as someone who Teach finds himself attached to even though Vane just hurt him. He can see that she's struggling but that she's willful and something fatherly in him just kicks in. I very much love their relationship. 
> 
> I also like the idea that the crew takes to Peter much quicker than they take to Caroline, both because he's male, but also because Peter seems like the sort of person who throws his whole self into something once he's made up his mind, and Caroline is just a little more guarded. Peter is also just good at learning things quickly too.
> 
> Thanks for reading!


	7. Part 2.2: The Remaining Days

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Caroline experiences what remains of a life at sea.

The rest of the journey should have been easy. Should have being the operative phrase. Caroline had the respect of the crew as much as one could manage when respect was earned by swords and not by gentle words, but about five days before they reached their destination she woke to storm clouds on the horizon. Teach had warned her the day before - when she had commented off-hand that they should be in Tortuga shortly - that no journey was without its issues. The facts were - he had said - that they had yet to travel through a storm so late in the summer was almost a joke played upon them by God. So it stood to reason that Caroline should have not been surprised by the dark clouds on the horizon. And yet she was, just a little bit. Storms and sickness had a habit of sneaking up on Caroline when she wasn’t paying attention.

She twisted the line in her hands as she worked to tie it tight. Moments before Caroline had been directed to give the sail just enough give that it could collect the strong winds of the storm, but tie it tight enough that the sail wouldn’t go flying off into the abyss. As she continued to look at the storm clouds Teach stepped up next to her, “It looks terrifying, but if the way the clouds are hanging are anything to go by, it shouldn’t be a big storm. With good direction we should be through it in a few hours.”

“And you’re the good direction?”

“I am,” he adjusted the guns across his chest, “Someone has to be on this ship of fools.”

His eyes shone when he said that and Caroline laughed, trying to shake off the jitters that the oncoming storm had conjured up in her, “Don’t let the men hear you call them fools, they already think that you play favorites with me.”

“It’s not about favoritism,” Teach told her, “It’s about making sure that I don’t bring the might of The Flying Dutchman or The English Rose down on me. If anything happened to your pretty head I’m sure I’d get a visit from your parents some time or another.”

What Caroline knew of what the two ships could do she had heard from her parents. She hadn’t been able to see them in action, it was too much of a risk to put on a show near the shoreline and the ships were usually anchored when she walked their decks anyway. However the stories were enough. The Dutchman - the ship that could sail between the land of the living and the sea of the dead - that could cross the ocean in a shorter time than a man could spit. Or The English Rose - crewed by ghosts - a ship that hid in plain sight until it was upon you and the cannons had torn apart your broadsides. Myths, legends, and true stories all in one. She grinned up at him, “You’re not afraid of The Empress?”

“Miss Swann is one of the best to be sure, and I wouldn’t want to face her once she’s boarded. But The Empress is the same as The Adventure - just a ship - and I don’t doubt my abilities to outrun or out gun her.”

“She’s still your” Caroline mimed putting a crown on her head and Teach quirked an eyebrow, “You know.”

“Only to the number of us who are alive to remember,” Teach reminded her, “To the new batch, she’s just a pirate. A famous one for being a woman, but still one among many. Who knows, someday we might have a new one.”

Someday. But not yet. Not until the need for war and the magical arts of the sea were too great to ignore. Caroline hoped she got to meet this new King, but wasn’t holding out to hope. If she met her parents what was the need to travel separate from them? Caroline saw none, “Do you ever think that time will come again?”

“Maybe,” he answered her, “But I sure as hell hope it comes later rather than sooner.”

“Or not at all if we’re lucky,” he laughed at her and she finished her final knot, “Anything else I can do while I’m up here?”

He glanced up into the sails and seemed to be considering something before he said, “Mizzen topsail needs to be reefed and tied to the mast,” he looked at her, “I know you’ve never been in up that far in the rig but no better time to learn. And the men are about to start.”

“What was that about keeping me safe? I don’t want to accuse you of being a liar captain but your words are sounding a little bit like horeshit.”

“Go tell the boatswain that I’ve conscripted you.”

Teach turned to walk among the rest of the crew, which seemed to be the end of the conversation. With a sigh Caroline put the rest of her wits together. As she walked toward the boatswain she nodded at Peter who was helping tie the cannons down in the gundeck below. Some men had all the luck.

\---

Being up in the higher masts was both terrifying and exhilarating. The wind was stronger up here and Caroline felt like it was going to blow her away. But she clung to the mast with dear life, and together she and four other men brought the mizzen top in, and helped tie it to the mast. Delicately then, so that she didn’t go tumbling onto the deck below, Caroline climbed down the ropes. Back on solid ground, Caroline stood on the deck with shaking legs. A look around the deck told her that most people had cleared off to head down into the galley to wait out the storm. Just in time too, because a drop of water hit her face and slid down her cheek. The clouds were upon them.

Down in the galley Caroline found Peter surrounded by the men has she had become accustomed to seeing around him, and he passed her a plate of food he had collected from the kitchen, “Cook told me not to take two plates but I told him I’d help with his shift in the morning and it was for you - not me - so the ration was still fair. Caved pretty soon after.”

“The cook has had it in for me ever since we used his kitchen for a kiss. Seems to be all fair-is-fair with you though,” Caroline took a sip of water as the ship lurched under them.

“That’s because I help him clean when I have time,” Peter shrugged, “I’m a people person.”

Despite everything Caroline couldn’t help the smile that spread over her face at his words, “I’m a people person too!” He raised an eyebrow at her, “Just not here,” Caroline sighed, “You’re far too into yourself Peter. It’s going to get you in trouble.”

“Not if I have the pirate princess Caroline by my side,” he kissed her on the cheek.

“God not you too Peter,” but Caroline let him kiss her anyway.

The ship lurched again, and Caroline’s cup tipped over. Well, the water had started to go very stale, so she didn’t exactly miss it. Even though it was the first taste of water she had drank since yesterday. There was nothing for it. Three men sat down at their table, crowding out a few men who groaned. One of them was holding a leather bag from which he withdrew a set of playing cards, “Ever played Whist?”

Caroline eyed the cards. Jack had been very fond of Whist, but she also knew that he was very fond of winning by cheating. Which Caroline had a feeling would not be appreciated here. Especially since she was still on thin ice. It wouldn’t do to re-anger the crew so close to making land, “Once or twice,” she said.

“We play for after storm duties. Untying rowboats, checking the ship over for cracks, taking down the sails.”

“What are you playing for?”

“Cracks,” the second one answered, “I just lost to Paul over there, and now it’s your turn.”

He was already shuffling the deck so it seemed that Caroline didn’t have a choice in playing. She tapped the table as he continued to shuffle before she said, “What about Peter?”

“Your boy already said he’d help clean up the water in the galley and we’re very in debt to him for taking such a terrible job see, so it’s just you.”

Peter needed to be stopped Caroline decided, “Deal then,” she told the man.

For an hour they dealt hands and cards. Water sloshed around them and Caroline became very thankful that she had not been volunteered for the storm crew. Not that Teach would have let her. Climbing into the rigs and the higher masts of the ship was well and good, but if she went overboard her mother really would sink this ship. She shuddered. No need to get into the middle of a pirate war. Not when those were so unnecessary and messy. In front of her the man she was playing with cracked a wide and overconfident smile, “Last hand, and I don’t think you have anything to counter this trick.”

He played a high diamond on the wet table, and Caroline looked down at the two cards in her hand, “What was trump again Peter?”

“Clubs,” he answered.

“I thought so,” and then Caroline put down the queen of clubs and looked up the man she was playing against.

His mouth gaped like a fish but he snapped it shut and then tossed his ace of diamonds down on the pile, “Done in.”

Caroline grabbed the trick and then leaned over the shoulder of the other man who had been keeping score, “Tally?”

He continued doing the addition and then he finally said, “I won by one.”

“Cheat!”

The man that Caroline had bested did not look happy but their crowned winner continued to talk, “As I said, I won by one so I’ll be taking down sails,” he pointed at Caroline, “she came in second, so she’ll be at hand on the deck for whatever the Captain needs,” finally he looked at the other man, “And you’ll be checking for cracks.”

Well, second wasn’t bad. And at least she wasn’t checking the ship for cracks. Peter nugged her, and then she nugged him back. Their eyes locked and a few minutes later after they had cleared their food into the kitchen Peter had dragged her down into the hold. There was water all over the floor, and Caroline was sure her pants would stain with the sea water, but the kisses up her neck convinced her that it was rather all worth it.

\---

The sky eventually broke and Caroline worked with the crew to restore the ship as best she could. It seemed that with the passage of the storm, time seemed to pass a fair deal quicker than Caroline had expected, and somewhere at the end of the twenty-seventh day of their travel a shout was heard from the bow of the ship, “Land!”

A cry went up among the crew and Caroline walked to the rail of the ship to look out over the sea as Tortuga slowly came into view on the horizon. Tortuga was a much smaller port town than Penzance. A number homes dotted the cove along with a number of docks that held smaller merchant ships. Tents were set up before the town proper on the beach, and people could be seen hauling goods off ships and further inland. She let out a small sigh, she didn’t recognize any of the ships, but she knew based on her mother’s stories that both Elizabeth and Jack came to port here often. Pirates had peculiar ports they liked better than others, and this port was the most used home of her family. They would come, eventually. Even if it took some time. Teach leaned over the rail with her, “Everything you were expecting?”

“I don’t know what I was expecting,” she told him honestly, “But it looks like Peter and I will have to hold up here for a little while. No ships I recognize in the harbor.”

“Last I heard Barbossa and Sparrow were feuding over that damn ship, but you might find a friendly face yet. If you go looking in the right places.”

Caroline hadn’t even thought about Barbossa. He hadn’t ever come to visit, nor did she ever expect him too. But the way her parents had talked about him, he was still a family friend, despite all the backstabbing and heartbreak, and the killing her grandfather thing. Sometimes Caroline tried to be angry at him for taking someone she had never known away from her, but it was hard when her mother said Barbossa’s name with some sort of fondness. Instead, all she knew was her grandfather's death was what had led to her parents meeting, and her own birth. It wasn’t enough for her to thank Barbossa, but sometimes, when she was terrible, she thought - I’m glad, “Thank you for everything Captain,” she told Teach and meant it.

“Don’t thank me,” he told her honestly, “Had you been anyone else I would have shot you on the dock for running your mouth,” that wasn’t a pleasant thought, “But you pulled your share which is more than some men try to do, so I have no regrets.”

“Well I’m glad I have my last name then,” Caroline pushed away from the rail.

“We’re going to drop anchor just off the shore,” and Caroline had a feeling this was what he had really come to tell her, “I’ll be sending you out in the last boat. The men are getting rowdy for a good woman, and I don’t disparage them, having the same feeling myself. I think you can understand my priorities.”

Caroline didn’t understand his priorities exactly, but it didn’t matter to Caroline when her rowboat left in the long run, so she just nodded and shuddered a little bit when he slapped her on the back. The man left her having said his piece and Caroline let the noise of the town carry her away. Ready or not, she had arrived.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Overall I know a great deal more happens at sea, including a number of deaths, but I thought to make this part of Caroline journey easier because it fits better in regards to the rest of the story narrative. I did a ton of research about early 1700s pirate ship terms and blueprints to figure out how most ships looked/operated, and I hope that it's mostly correct. I also did some research to figure out how long it took to sail between England and The Caribbean and 25 to 30 days seemed like the number to hit if the journey was mostly steady on. Here it stormed so I tacked on two extra days of travel. 
> 
> This chapter also has the first mention of upcoming events in Black Sails, although neither Teach nor Caroline know it as they talk about it.
> 
> Thanks for reading.


	8. Part 2.3: The Port

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Caroline makes unexpected allies.

Settling into Tortuga was harder that Caroline had expected. In fact, things being harder than she expected was becoming a bit of a theme. It wasn’t a good idea to fling her family name around not when surrounded by so many unknown people and no Teach to protect her, so the work that she could find to do was basically nothing. Peter on the other hand, god, he seemed to just fall into things. By the second night he had already gotten work at a blacksmiths when he took his sword in to be sharpened. As he told it to her in their small rented room overlooking the main street, and just a few houses away from the tavern, they had both been fans of the same books as children. The pirate was incredibly smart and well read, and had almost offered him the job on the spot. He was only working as an errand boy and doing small things around the shop but work was work and the few coins he brought in the first week were enough for them to continue to pay for their room.

Peter had also brought a small bag of coin from England that he hadn’t told Caroline about, too afraid that if he told the crew on The Adventure they would have demanded their own share, or killed him late at night for it. Caroline thought he was being a little over cautious when he had told her that, but the bag of coin, small as it was, kept them in food for a week or two. So despite her initial umbrage, Caroline was glad of that too. Together over the next two weeks they slowly transformed their little rented room into a living space. Even though she was just sixteen, part of Caroline thought it was rather fun, the idea of them here sharing a room. It wasn’t exactly playing house, because Caroline didn’t know how long they would be here, but part of it felt like they were.

They hadn’t slept together, because Peter was a consummate gentleman. Kissing was fine, he told her as they lay together on their shared bed, but if they were going to sleep together they should be married. That had made Caroline’s heart leap but Peter had put his foot down on that too, by saying he didn’t want to marry her until she was at least eighteen. At least. Twenty or Twenty-two was a more accepted age, but Peter could make an exception for when they were both adults. So they were a couple far past courting, but not old enough to do much more. Sometimes Caroline hated Peter for his proper ways and how staunchly he stuck to doing things properly - even in the face of piracy - but Caroline knew he did it because he respected her. Which was more than she could say for some of the men here.

Oh most of them knew that she wasn’t to be touched she was too pure, whatever that meant, but there were a few who she could tell were casting their eyes at her whenever she was at the small port market, or looking over the recently arrived wares from pirate ships that wouldn’t sell for good money. Books, cards, games, small trinkets of jewelry that had no monetary value. Which is why she wasn’t surprised when it all came to a head. She had been standing in front of the local brothel picking through dresses that were too simple to sell, and that the girls at the brothel had passed over when a long shadow cast over her. When she turned she realized that it was the skinny pirate on Teach’s ship that she had traded sword blows with. While she had grown closer, or as close as she could, with the other members of the crew she had kept her distance from this one.

She was a little surprised to see him considering that The Adventure had left a week ago, “Hello again pretty.”

Caroline put the basket she was holding down and crossed her arms, “How good to see you again.”

“Not good,” he spit the words at her, and some of his actual spit flew out and landed on Caroline’s cheeks. She wiped it off with the back of her hand, “See, Captain got a little angry at me for approaching you. Said I wasn’t invited on his ship if I couldn’t keep my wits together on the sea.”

“I must admit I fail to see why that’s my fault,” Caroline said, even though she knew it would push him further into his anger.

“A woman can’t just come onto a ship tempting men like that.”

“I can do whatever I want,” Caroline leaned back up against the wall of the brothel, “Your wits are your own. It’s not my fault they are poor.”

The first crack of his fist did not come as a surprise, but it caught her off guard just enough for her head to smack against the wall she had been leaning on. Well, if that was the way he wanted to play it. Fist clenched Caroline hit him back and then blocked the very easy to read haymaker, before bringing her fist into his stomach and then slamming her knee up between his legs. It was dirty fighting, but Will had told her once that sometimes one had to fight dirty to win. He went down like a sack, hands clenched between his legs. Wiping her hand under her nose Caroline was not surprised to see blood dotting her fingers, “That’s quite a hook you have there,” Caroline turned to see a tall woman with deep wine red hair looking at her, a fan waving in front of her face.

The man finally stood, but instead of attacking her - and having seen that they had drawn a few onlookers - hobbled off and yelled between his teeth as he ran, “Bitch!”

Caroline wondered if he knew any other words, and ignored him to address the woman who had talked to her, “It’s not much but it works against skinny men like him.”

“Hmmm,” the woman continued to fan herself, “If it’s not much to you our place has been looking for someone who can drive men like him off, a woman would surely be different. Unsettle the men a little bit.”

“I’m not sure I’m who you are looking for,” Caroline answered, “I’ve got the basics but in a big brawl I don’t think I’d stand much of a chance.”

“Not a problem,” the woman said, “Anamaria should be back in port tomorrow and she can teach you. She owes us after we told Gibbs off from getting too friendly with her last time The Pearl was in harbor.”

It suddenly became very apparent this woman may have had some sort of contact with her parents. Or, at least minor dealings with her other family members. If she wanted to have any chance of finding them, this could be the best place to start, “Caroline,” she stuck out her hand, “Nice to meet you.”

“Scarlett,” she shook Caroline’s hand firmly, “Oh Giselle is going to love you. She enjoys women who can put men in their place,” Caroline opened her mouth, “Not like that. Although some women have tried with her. Broken hearts the lot of them.”

“I’m sorry,” Caroline didn’t know what she was sorry for even though she said it.

“Thank you! I am right here, and yet she overlooks me every time. Friendship has had to suffice for now I suppose,” she closed her fan, “Come in and we will get you priced out. Can’t offer much but the coin is enough for food, and well the dresses are quite nice.”

Caroline followed her into the brothel. It wasn’t the work she had been thinking she would do, but work was work. And if she learned how to actually throw a punch, well, Caroline thought that was pay enough.

\---

Anamaria was a bit of a brawler Caroline discovered. The woman didn’t pull punches, or kicks, or any sort of shit. They had to practice early in the morning when most of the port was asleep because Giselle said that if the men saw the person who was supposed to shoot them for touching the women incorrectly just learning how to pull a punch, well that would be the end of the protection. Scarlett had agreed, and so Caroline found herself going to bed late and waking up about an hour before the sun peeked over the sky. Today, as a gesture of togetherness, Peter had decided to join her and he sat on the barrel as Anamaria circled Caroline her arms in front of her as a protective shield, “Come.”

The two of them traded a number of blows, back and forth - nothing too serious - but when Anamaria landed a hit deep on the inside of Caroline’s hip Peter let out a bit of a groan, “Ouch, that looks like it hurt.”

“And that will be the end of it,” Giselle said from the door of the brothel, “We can’t have you looking too bruised.”

“She’s improving,” Anamaria told Giselle, “She should be good enough to at least smack around some of the men. Whoever taught her gave her the basics so at least I didn’t have to start from scratch.”

“So then you won’t need to give me the big belt of guns tonight?”

The big belt of guns weighed her down. Caroline hated it. But it made her look intimidating, Giselle thought and the men seemed to agree when she moved between them to make sure they were keeping everything under table, aboveboard. The first night she had confessed to Scarlett she wasn’t sure she was really made for this, her face a little red at having caught more than she had been expecting to see under a table and Scarlett had only laughed and given her face a pat. It had felt condescending, but later that night Scarlett and Giselle had poured her a small cup of wine fron the tavern over and gone on a number of long tangents about their own lives in prostitution. It had helped relax her. That and the woman whose sleeves and dress top had fallen off just a table over. Legs straddling the man upon whose lap she was seated.

They hadn’t meant to start off this way of course - Scarlett and Giselle. But there had been little for them back in England poor as they were, and their prospects for getting a husband were slim since they were orphans who had no house mistress who would fight for them. Scarlett had suggested they escape to America where there were more opportunities, but their voyage to Boston had been fraught and instead they had found themselves here and among men who paid well. A woman had to discover her body eventually Scarlett had said, and while Caroline was still a little too young to work, she was old enough to learn, “We’ll pair you back to a sword and a pistol like the other men,” Giselle answered snapping Caroline back to the present.

Peter swung his legs off the barrel and walked over to kiss Caroline, dipping her low in a gesture that should have been romantic but just had Caroline laughing at his frivolousness when finally let her up for air, “Well, I suppose it’s time I got going. Sun is almost up and that’s the call for when work starts for me.”

“I’ll see you tonight,” she told him.

She watched him go and heard Giselle ask Anamaria, “So how long are you in port for?”

“Hopefully no more than a week longer. The ship took a bit of damage running away from the merchant ship we were hunting and if the repairs take longer than that, I might go a bit stir crazy.”

“Come in for breakfast?”

“I thought you would never ask,” Anamaria stepped into the still empty brothel.

Giselle gestured to Caroline, “Come on. You too. Starting work on an empty belly does no one any good.”

Inside the brothel was a small room with a bar tucked into the corner. The bar wasn’t allowed to serve more than beer, so it didn’t compete with the tavern down the street, but the beer was good enough for men who were just coming to get their rocks off. In the back of the room a staircase wound up to a balcony that held a number of rooms. For business, Scarlett had told Caroline when she had asked. To Caroline’s own pride, she had not flushed when she had been told. Caroline wondered why traveling with a number of pirates was easy but any sort of talk about bodily functions turned her into someone who suddenly didn’t know up from down. She would have to fix that, it was just sex after all, “Any news from the sea?” Giselle asked as she began to cut an apple.

“Last I heard Jack had The Pearl if that’s what you’re asking,” Anamaria answered, “It’s all the people in this port seem to care about. Their own little dramas.”

“Anything about The English Rose or The Dutchman?” Caroline asked quietly.

Both women turned to look at her and Giselle wiped the knife she had been using on a cloth, before stabbing it into the wooden table where it sat upright, “And what do you know about The English Rose or The Dutchman?”

Things had gotten very still in the room, and Caroline was very overcome by the suggestion that she may have said the wrong thing, “Nothing,” but it was too late, “Forget I said anything.”

“Not many people know those ships,” Anamaria said with a tilt of her head, “And those that do talk about them like they are legends.”

Well, she was in for it now, “But they come to port here don’t they?”

Anamaria turned, and her arm hung off the back of the chair, all her attention on Caroline, “Sometimes. But on whispers and rumors. They don’t stay long, just long enough to unload. So it’s interesting you talk about them so easily.”

Caroline really hoped that she could trust these women, “My mother is on one of them.”

Anamaria was out of her chair like a pistol shot, holding Caroline’s face between her thumb and her index finger. She turned Caroline’s face so she could take it all in, and then she said, “My God, you’re Katharine’s kid.”

“Is that a problem?”

At that Anamaria began to laugh, but it wasn’t mocking. It was - a release - the sound of her finding whatever it was she had found, very funny, “Not at all,” she grinned, “In fact, it’s helped a lot of things become much clearer.”

Meanwhile Giselle had gone whiter than Caroline had though her pale complexion would allow, “This is Elizabeth’s princess?”

“No one calls her that anymore Giselle you know that,” Anamaria corrected her, “But yes. I think you may have inadvertently hired Captain Norrington’s daughter to work at your brothel.”

Caroline had the feeling that she was missing something as they continued to look at her, “Are either of you going to explain to me what is going on?”

In front of her Anamaria began laughing again, and Giselle just sighed. From their reactions Caroline realized that an explanation was not going to be so easily forthcoming and determined that she would wait out their amusement. There was a story here, and by God she was going to get it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I adore Giselle and Scarlett in this story. They had a small short created for them to flesh out their backstory but I've mostly rewritten that here to give them a little more depth. It's been about seventeen years so they've moved on from Jack and both are just doing their own thing. I think their relationship with Caroline is really sweet. Caroline is growing a small family of aunts and uncles and Giselle and Scarlett are just two more for the pile. Anamaria is here too for a cameo because I miss her and adore her. 
> 
> Thanks for reading.


	9. Part 2.4: The Letter

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Caroline celebrates in the small port town.

A month passed. Caroline spent most of her time helping at the brothel, walking in the market, practicing her sword skills, and growing closer to Giselle and Scarlett. Growing closer to Peter too. It was a far different life compared to the one she had before, but she liked it. Became enamored with it. Caroline loved the freedom especially. How she was no longer beholden to anyone. Unless she chose her company, and the company here was good. Time blurred, and Caroline let it. Let herself get swept up in the hustle and bustle of the port, and before Caroline knew it she was waking up to Peter holding a tray with a small fruit cake on it, and the nicest cup of tea Caroline had smelled in a long time. It was even in a porcelain cup with delicate blue birds painted on the edge. She shimmied up the bed and accepted both with a wide grin. Caroline nibbled on the cake and took a sip of the tea as she tried to puzzle through the reason, “What is this for?”

“It’s the first time since your parents, and I figured that I could make do,” Peter smiled at her.

The first time since her parents? Since her parents, what? Caroline tried to remember something that she only did with her parents and her eyes widened as large as the sea. It couldn’t be could it? And - oh maybe she should have just waited in England. Instead of running off with this half-baked plan. Caroline wondered if they were terrified. If they had arrived and found her missing, and knew not what to do. Well, mistakes made could not be corrected, “Thank you.”

“Seventeen,” he said, climbing into the bed to sit at the headboard, “Me next week.”

That was the other thing about them that Caroline had always loved. How close their birthdays were. On her fourteenth birthday she had invited him to her party for the first time and Peter had been horrified at first. Not because he hated pirates, but because he was terrified that they were going to do something terrible to him. When he realized that Caroline’s parents were people too, although people who sometimes did questionable things, he had calmed down rather quickly and had struck up a conversation with Caroline’s father about the book he had been reading. Her father, perhaps glad to see that Caroline had made more than a surface level friend, even if it was a boy, had listened enthusiastically. The next year they had celebrated much in the same way - the year after as well, “What should I do for you?” She asked around bites of the cake, “You always say nothing but that was when you were a lord heir and your parents bought you whatever you wanted.”

“I’m still a lord heir,” he told her, “Just because I’m across an ocean I haven’t lost my title. It doesn’t work like that.”

“Surely your parents must be out of their mind with worry for you?”

“Like yours aren’t? They must be at the academy home now wondering when you’ve gone off to.”

“Well, I had hoped to find them here before that but that clearly hasn’t happened,” she sighed, “And I’m sure once they realize I’m not there, they will come sailing directly here. They have boats and means. It just might take a little time.”

Peter fidgeted, “I left a note with my parents,” he confessed.

“You didn’t say where you were going did you?”

It wouldn’t do to bring all of England down on Tortuga. The Crown was always looking for an excuse to attack a pirate port, and a lost lord apparent living among them was the perfect sort of excuse. Peter shook his head, “Only very vague hints,” he promised, and Caroline let out a sigh that she had been holding in, “But even if they found out I was here I’m sure it would all be fine.”

The way he said that it would all be fine, didn’t sit exactly well with Caroline who knew that it wasn’t always fine. But it was too late, she couldn’t have regrets now. Not when her parents might show within the month upon discovering that she had scurried off to the ocean, “Let’s not fight,” Caroline told him, “It’s my birthday and I’d much rather you be kissing me.”

“I can do that.”

Caroline let the cake fall onto the bed and laughed as Peter began to kiss her rather soundly. This was a very different birthday from the rest but Caroline decided that it was well worth it just for the way their bodies fit together.

\---

The brothel was full to the brim that night. A ship had come in that afternoon with a crew who was looking to get their appetites wet, and it seemed like nothing was going to stop them. Caroline sat on the bar with a cup of beer in her hand. She had taken a few sips but was trying to abstain from more. Despite the fact that she wanted to down the whole thing, thanks to it being the night of her birthday, she knew that she had to be on watch. Scarlett stood behind her cleaning up the bar and looking out over the establishment. Watching just like Caroline was. In the month she had been here Caroline had learned that both women were incredibly smart just in different ways. Scarlett seemed to manage the money, she made sure that the girls were being adequately paid, but that they weren’t stealing from the customers. Meanwhile Giselle knew how to put on a show.

Currently she was entertaining three men at once, while somehow keeping them all under control. By the end of the night she wouldn’t sleep with any of them. No she’d get them high off her charms, fill them full of beer, and leave them passed out on the table. Her favorite was the man who ran the tavern across the street. At least when captains were not in town. But today, thanks to the newly arrived ship there was a captain in town and as soon as she was done with these three men she would enchant him too, and take him up to bed. Caroline took another sip of her rum as Scarlett said, eyes fixed upon Giselle, “She’s Teach’s favorite when he comes into port. I hear stories about all his dead wives and sometimes I fear she’ll run off and join them,” she threw her rag on the bar, “But I know she’s smarter than that.”

“I think this whole establishment might fall apart without her,” Caroline commented watching as one of the men fell into a stupor.

“Of that I have no doubt,” she stared at Caroline, “Now, when were you going to tell us it was your birthday?”

Caroline turned around, some of the beer in her cup sloshing over, “Who told you?” Scarlett raised an eyebrow, “Peter.”

“He was very excited to put everything together for you this morning,” Scarlett said, “But he needed a little help with the honey fruit cake.”

“It was delicious,” Caroline told her, “My compliments to whoever made it.”

“Just a little cornmeal, honey, salt, eggs, and oil. A local fruit or two.”

Before Caroline could thank her again a man was up out of his seat and yelling at one of the women who he had backed up against the wall. His face was red from too much beer, and the woman was doing her best to press her body as close to the wall as possible. She was holding the top of her dress up as a false shield. Caroline acted instantly, slipping off the bar and heading over in the direction of the terrified woman. When she reached her she rounded on the man, “Do we have a problem here?”

“We were having a good time until I tried to give her a little kiss and she got belligerent, wouldn’t accept it.”

“I told him I’d do whatever he wanted, but that I drew the line at lip contact,” the woman said.

Caroline asked the man point blank, “Is that true?”

“I paid for it.”

With a pat of her belt for emphasis on the gun there Caroline said, “Rules are rules. Pick a girl who will kiss you, or get out.”

“Oh I will,” he growled, grabbing his jacket up from the chair.

Having sent the harasser on his way Caroline turned to the woman who had pulled the rest of her dress up over her body, “Are you okay?”

“Yes,” she nodded, “I think I will turn in for the night. Please tell Scarlett I’m sorry about the lack of wages tonight and I’ll make it up tomorrow night two fold.”

“I’ll let her know,” Now dressed the woman hurried to the back of the brothel and took the stairs two at a time to the room she most likely shared with a few of the other women of the house. With a huge sigh Caroline bellowed, “Back to partying everyone!”

There was a cheer and Caroline returned to Scarlett who had finished cleaning and was now looking at Caroline with a smirk, “Well handled.”

“I think I’m getting used to this,” Caroline admitted.

“Men are easy once you get to know them. Not to say you should treat all men as if they are easy,” she warned, “Someday you’ll meet men who are harder, men who are complex characters, who will steal your heart and won’t give it back. You can’t treat those men as if they are easy, or you’ll lose a game you didn’t even know you were playing.”

Caroline took another sip of her beer, which was emptier than she remembered it being. Over the past month her conversations with the two women had been sprinkled with bits of knowledge like this. A sexual education, Giselle had said, one had to have one eventually, “Are you talking about Jack Sparrow?”

“God no, we’ve moved on from that particular man,” Giselle had arrived holding a stack of mugs from the men she had swindled, “And somewhere between the mistake that was him and you showing up on our shores, I believe Scarlett decided that she was only going to strictly give her heart to women from now on.”

“It’s safer that way dear Giselle,” Scarlett said with a wink, “You wouldn’t happen to know any?”

“Sorry,” Giselle picked up a giant tanker of beer, “But I’ll let you know if I see any.”

She walked back into the madness and sat directly at the table with the captain, making sure to squirm as she sat on his lap. Strap of her dress falling off just so, the rest of her tumbling out shortly after. She was terrifying, Caroline decided, “Someday,” Scarlett told Caroline, “You just wait.”

With that sort of confidence Caroline had a heart to believe her. After all, what Scarlett wanted, Caroline found - she got.

\---

Caroline returned to Peter a little bit drunker than she had anticipated. She hoped that he wasn’t too upset about it. But she stopped in the door of their rented space upon seeing him. He was sitting on the bed with a piece of paper in his hands. Caroline did her best to join him on the bed and put her head on his shoulder. She was very tired, but it seemed that Peter still wanted to tell her something, “I received a letter from The Governor of Tortuga.”

“Tortuga has a Governor?”

There didn’t seem to be much governing going on down in the streets below, but maybe that was by design, “Thomas Handasyd, it seems.”

“Handasyd is a mouthful,” Caroline whispered tiredly.

“He is having a party at his house, and he has invited me upon request of my parents.”

“I think your parents are just trying to lure you -” Caroline yawned, “home. And I thought they didn’t know where we were?”

“It would be impolite to refuse,” Peter told her, “And they must have parsed out my vagueries, sent a letter to follow post haste.”

Caroline didn’t really want to go to a party with a number of stuffy English gentlemen. They were so boring. She much preferred the rowdy men of the brothel. Worse - her father and mother had all sorts of horror stories about those sorts of men. Elizabeth had a few too, but she didn’t tell them as often. Peter was an outlier, not the rule. Caroline liked how things were here. It was simple but it was a life. As much as she had known it was going to be true, piracy or at least the vestiges of piracy, suited her, “Do we have to go?”

“He’s throwing it on my birthday,” Peter said.

“Bastard,” Caroline snorted, “I think that’s blackmail.”

“Language!”

Caroline snorted again. But if this… Handasyd was really throwing his party on the same day that Peter turned seventeen then Caroline would go. She had been wondering what she could do for Peter on his own birthday and if this was it, then she would put on the dress, and regress to whomever she had been before Teach, before the brothel, before Penzance. It was only for one night after all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The local fruits in Caroline's cake are not blueberries. Thomas Handasyd was a real person! He's a bit different in my story than in real life, but he was an actual Governor of Tortuga. I almost used Archibald Hamilton, who came after him, but I thought that if this was going to cross over with Black Sails that was two Hamiltons too many. I'm already two James deep. 
> 
> This is just a cute chapter used to grow Giselle and Scarlett a bit more. If Teach is part of the pile of Caroline's growing list of uncles, both Giselle and Scarlett are now part of Caroline's pile of aunts. There to teach her all sorts of life lessons, even if they are not taught very traditionally. 
> 
> Thanks for reading!


	10. Part 2.5: The Party

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A party turns into something else entirely for Caroline.

It was the night of the party and Caroline was in the room that Scarlett shared with Giselle. Scarlett was behind her buttoning up the dress they had procured for her. The dress was a well sown thing although not overly expensive looking. It had been made with blue fabric and had flowers stitched into it in black thread. The underskirt was a simple white color, but together it complimented her complexion. Caroline hoped that it didn’t look too stollen, but the fit, which was just a little on this side of loose, made it clear that it had not been made for her. Still, somehow with enough ruffing and tugging, and pinning Scarlett had worked a miracle and the dress sat well enough against her frame. Caroline turned around, taking herself in the mirror, “You’re going to put the other women to shame,” Giselle sipped the cup of wine she had brought upstairs with her.

“I have no idea how we are going to survive the night without you,” Scarlett told her, “The men have gotten used to your glare.”

“Just tell them if I come back and have heard any sort of story of misbehavior I’ll make sure they can never have children again.”

Scarlett whistled, “That’s quite the threat.”

“A promise more like,” Caroline said.

The three of them laughed, the sound of their merriment carrying down into the brothel below. With a grunt Scarlett stood and walked over to her vanity and opened one of the lower drawers. She rummaged around in it before pulling out a simple necklace filled to brim with turquoise beads. She walked over to Caroline who pulled her hair back so that Scarlett could affix it behind her, “There,” Scarlett said, “Now you are finished.”

Caroline twirled once more to the sound of applause and then let out a little puff of air, “What’s it like?”

Giselle took another sip of her wine, “What’s what like darling?”

With very little shame, having lost almost all of it due to her current line of work, Caroline said, “Sex.”

“Messy. Exhilarating with the right person.” Giselle said at the same time Scarlett said, “With a man? Terribly boring.”

“That’s not very helpful,” Caroline said, “I’m just around it all the time now,” she clarified, “And I can’t help wondering.”

“Are you thinking of trying to seduce that boy of yours?” Scarlett asked, “He’s very proper so you might struggle a little bit.”

“I’m not thinking,” Caroline said, “I’m going to. Tonight. All this waiting before marriage seems incredibly boring and I’m tired of sitting around waiting for him to get over it.”

“Good for you!” Giselle said toasting the air, “I can go downstairs and get you a man to experiment on if you wish.”

At that Caroline shook her head, “No thank you,” she didn’t need to have her first attempt be with some man who was three sheets to the wind, and if Caroline was honest she wanted her first time to be with someone she cared about one way or the other, “But thank you.”

“Well it hardly matters,” Scarlett said, “Anyone can see that boy is head over heels for you. You’ll be fine regardless. The second you are out of your dress he’ll fold. Everything else will come to you in time.” Behind her Giselle snickered, “Oh you and your dirty mind.”

“Come to you in time,” Giselle had clearly had just passed into one sip too many of her wine, “Co-”

“Yes thank you Giselle,” Scarlett rolled her eyes.

There was a knock on the door and Peter stepped in. He was wearing the well put together uniform of a man who knew the sea. It wasn’t a naval officer's uniform but something more like an upscale merchant. It wasn’t fancy like the sort of thing a lord would wear, but Caroline thought he looked dashing all the same, “I’ve come to call for Caroline?”

“I’m ready,” Caroline said with a small smile.

“You look,” he stared at her, “Beautiful.”

“You look quite good yourself,” Caroline replied.

He took her hand and as they made to leave the room Scarlett cried out to them, “Have fun! And do enjoy the food!”

\---

The Governor's Mansion was further inland, a little way away from the port. As they approached Caroline couldn’t help but notice the dark skinned women and men who toiled in front of the building, fixing the garden, making everything right. It curled something in Caroline’s stomach and reminded her of her mother’s words late at night. About her grandfather, about luck, about how both of them were always just a few feet away from falling into an abyss that they would never be able to climb out of. About man’s greed. She swallowed. Their eyes followed her as Peter helped her off the horse they had ridden here, “Nervous?”

Peter had mistaken her disdain for nerves, “I’m fine,” she told him, “Do all Governor’s have such workers?”

He glanced around, “Many,” he answered honestly, “But not all.”

Briefly and fleetingly Caroline wondered if Elizabeth’s father had. But she doubted her mother would have fallen for Elizabeth if that had been the case, and she knew her mother had been paid a wage despite the color of her skin. So perhaps not then, “Take me inside?”

Peter held onto her arm, and linked so together they reached the door, upon which Peter knocked. There was a pause and then the door was opened by a servant who gave them her best smile - a smile that Caroline had a feeling was just a little put upon - before she said, “Name?”

“Peter Tattersall, and date.”

“Peter!” There was a cry from inside and a man who had to at least be in his forties appeared in an archway in front of them, “As I live and breathe it is the Tattersall boy! Come in!” He shot the servant a look, “Don’t just stand there open the door.”

The woman opened the door the rest of the way for them, and they stepped inside the home. It was furnished well with paintings and vases, and Caroline’s head without her say so began to catalogue how much each could be sold at port if they were all taken off a merchant ship. By the time her brain had done all the math she was a little dizzy, “Thank you for your invitation,” Peter told him, “Although I must admit I was surprised to get it.”

“Nonsense,” he brushed Peter’s comment aside, “When I got word from your mother and father that you were in town I thought ‘I must have this boy over’. Although I must admit when I heard whispers of where you were staying I was a little affronted. Such an abode is not made for men of our status.”

Now that he had talked for more than a few sentences Caroline had decided she hated this Thomas Handasyd. He was drunk on his position of Governor and Caroline became acutely aware how different Elizabeth’s father had been. She only had stories to go off of. But those stories were enough to paint a picture. He had been a good man among thieves. Among corrupted men, “It suits me fine,” Peter was telling him, “And the company is more than agreeable.”

“Ah! That’s right,” and now Thomas was staring directly at her, “Please introduce your lady to us.”

Lady, he said. Lady like she wasn’t thinking of slapping that self satisfied smug look off his face. He sat here safely in his big house and got rich off the activity of pirates and then turned around and played nice with The Crown. However from how he spoke Caroline could tell he didn’t care about the pirates. Just the money, just the things he could purchase with the power they gave him, “This is Caroline,” Peter introduced them.

“Please to meet you,” Caroline said, putting on her best airs.

The headmistress at her school would have been so proud by the way this idiot smiled as if Caroline had just gifted him the moon, “Well, come in, come in. Everyone is in the drawing room.”

He led them through the dining room and into the room behind it. Instantly Caroline’s body stiffened. She hadn’t meant to do so of course, but Peter noticed. Of course he did. The room was filled to the brim with The Crown’s naval officers. All sorts too, if the decorations on their jackets were any indication. Enemies, Caroline’s mind whispered to her without meaning to. For the second time that night Peter checked on her condition, “Are you sure you are okay?”

“Yes,” she reassured him, “Really.”

He gave her arm a pat before the cry of some of the officers called him over to their location. Caroline let him go and joined the women at the sitting chairs. She sat as she had been taught and did her best to find what they were talking about interesting. It wasn’t as if she judged them, she hadn’t judged Nora all those years ago, but sometimes she found the discussion so boring. One of them turned to her as if seeing Caroline for the first time, “And what do you think of Queen Anne’s current fashion choices?”

Caroline smiled pleasantly, “If only we could afford such dresses.”

The woman sighed, “That is what I was trying to say,” she gestured to the woman across from her, “Martha thinks she’s starting to look dour. And so soon after her coronation.”

“Hardly,” Caroline continued now that she knew she had made the correct choice, “I think all the gold looks lavish.”

She did not think the gold looked lavish. But the Queen seemed fond of it, which meant this woman liked it. Or at least thought it looked good on the Queen. For about an hour the party passed in a haze, between the harp player who showed up to regale them with about fifteen minutes of music, or the debate over Queen Anne’s dresses that seemed to go on for far longer than it needed to. Eventually Caroline had to stifle a yawn, it wasn’t that she was tired, it was just that she was dreadfully over it already. She missed the brothel, she missed Scarlett, and Giselle. She missed the flurry of activity, the jovial drinks and messiness. The chaos at the end of the day.

She stood and walked over to where Peter was in a lively debate with the men around him, “Just because you think the pirates are ruining trade, does not mean they are. Each time they attack a Spanish ship instead of ours is a win for The Crown,” he was saying, “Plus it keeps the navy sharp. A dull navy loses wars.”

The men turned as she arrived, and Peter smiled as he saw her, “Tell these men that I’m telling the truth.”

“A sharp navy is very important,” Caroline agreed.

One of the men shook his head in soft but humorous disagreement, “My men could use a little rest Peter.”

“Well,” Peter said, “That is understandable,” he brought Caroline to his side, “While you are here I’d like you to meet Commodore Hales.”

“Recently appointed,” he seemed rather aggrieved over that, “Thanks to an unfortunate skirmish at sea,” he looked at Caroline, “And who is your lucky lady?”

A pause.

Instead of introducing her as he normally did, as he always did because Caroline had told him many times - far too many times to count over and over again - Peter said, “This is Caroline Norrington,” with a grin.

Perhaps it was because the alcohol had loosened his tongue - or maybe he had become too chummy with these men thanks to their debate - whatever it was Caroline knew not, and would not know for the remainder of her life. But her last name hung in the air, and Caroline could not catch it or put it away.

In front of them the faces of the men grew grim and Caroline knew, with such a quick certainty exactly what had happened on that unfortunate skirmish at sea. The thing was, that because of her father, there were not many Norringtons these days. The name held too much weight. Too much power. Too much fear on occasion. Caroline grabbed Peter’s arm and tugged him in an attempt to leave, but it was too late. There was the cock of a gun and suddenly Caroline found herself face to face with the front of Hales’ pistol, “Your father killed my commander,” he said, “Stabbed him through the heart as we were attempting to defend a merchant ship.”

There was no way to deny this, so instead Caroline said, “The English Rose is known for how many it leaves alive commodore.”

“And it’s ability to appear alongside you as if summoned from the depths,” he did not lower the pistol, “A child of a pirate is still a pirate. I’m afraid Miss Norrington I must ask you to come with me. You are under arrest for your father’s crimes against The Crown.”

Everyone in the room had turned, unable to tear their eyes away from the unexpected commotion. Peter grabbed Hale’s arm, “Surly we can talk this out.”

“Your parents would be very disappointed in you Peter,” Thomas said his voice carrying over the crowd, “Arrest her.”

Hales stepped forward but Peter did not give him an inch. He grabbed his arm again. There was a scuffle as Peter tried to keep Hales away from her. A moment where Caroline thought the commander would relent. Just a second, a moment. Then a second attempt. She stepped forward to pull Peter off Hales. To end this, to give herself over as Thomas had demanded.

A gunshot.

A woman screamed and then Peter slumped to the ground. He wasn’t moving. A clean through and through. Caroline couldn’t take her eyes away from his still form, as Hales stored his pistol away in his belt and said, “Caroline Norrington, you are under arrest for the high crime of piracy and the death of heir apparent Peter Tattersall.”

She didn’t resist as they hauled her away from Peter’s body. Could not stop staring, unable to comprehend what had happened. How everything had gone wrong so quickly.

END PART TWO

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Writing this chapter was so hard ): I knew Peter was going to die going into this story but as I continued to write him I grew so fond of him! I debated pushing his death further out into the story just because of this, but it works best here, so it happens here. This chapter is a huge turning point for who Caroline becomes as a person. Which you will see later in ripples. Caroline also deals with slavery perhaps far more up close in this chapter than she had before. It's something she thinks about sometimes but thinking about, and seeing are two different things. 
> 
> Thank you for reading!


	11. Part 3.1: The Shift in Perspective

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Just before everything went wrong.

The sun hung high in the sky above the small private island that The Empress was docked near. A number of men were camped out on the beach and a few women from the port nearby were split between them. There was good cheer all around, but the Captain was nowhere to be seen. Inside the ship Katharine lay, her head tucked into Elizabeth’s shoulder while Elizabeth softly played with her hair. It wasn’t exactly safe for them to be camped out here, but after the disaster three weeks ago, the men deserved a little rest. A little fun.

Two weeks in almost constant full sail as they navigated around the naval ships in the area had been hell. Finally Will had put his foot down and given Elizabeth and Katharine leave while he and James patrolled the area. This whole debacle was their fault anyway. Both Will and James had seen a simple merchant ship with a simple looking Captain on the horizon and James had been sure they would cave as soon as they boarded, and the name Norrigton was heard upon the mouths of the crew. And they had, but the whole thing had been a trap and a number of English soldiers had poured from the hold. A battle had ensued and their ships had been able to get away, but there were far more dead English officers than James had been comfortable with in the end.

If it wasn't for their skirmish Katharine knew they would be in Tortuga by now. A few days before everything had gone down hill they had run into Anamaria who had informed them - between pearls of laughter - that Caroline had escaped to the port town. James had been surprised but Katharine hadn’t. Caroline had the sea in her blood, it had only been a matter of time really. There was only so long their daughter would have been able to avoid the call of the ocean. Will had a habit of saying that Caroline was the best of them to which Jack had said she was also the worst of them. That had prompted Katharine into argument with him, but she knew Jack was right. As much as she had disliked him at that exact moment, “Do you think the men are having a good time out there?” Katharine asked.

Elizabeth looked down at her, “I hope so,” she sighed, “I hate using women as a distraction from problems. They deserve better.”

“You’re talking about the women right?”

“Of course,” Elizabeth said, “Who else?”

“No one,” Katharine rolled over so she straddled Elizabeth in their nakedness, ‘They are not the only ones who sound like they could use a little bit of distracting.”

Katharine wiggled and Elizabeth laughed, capturing Katharine’s face between her hands before dragging her down for a long kiss. This was nice Katharine decided. Despite the English breathing down their necks. At least she was with Elizabeth, at least they had time to take each other in. With a sigh, Katharine separated from Elizabeth, and pulled back the covers, trailing soft kisses down Elizabeth’s revealed belly, “You don’t have to,” Elizabeth told her, they were well worn out from last time.

“Who said I was going to?” Katharine looked up at her, eyes hooded.

“I can see it in your face,” Elizabeth said, “You always want to.”

Katharine laughed because Elizabeth was mostly correct. Her laughter tickled Elizabeth’s stomach and she watched Elizabeth purse her lips in an attempt not to laugh along with her. As Katharine was thinking about which part of Elizabeth she would like to kiss most and how much she loved the feeling of Elizabeth’s hands curled around her head while her mouth was pressed against Elizabeth’s sex, there was a knock on the door. It was perhaps the worst possible time for a knock at the door. Maybe they could ignore it? But then there was a second knock, “What?” Katharine called out annoyed at being interrupted.

“Captain Turner’s ship just surfaced, the quartermaster sent me over from the beach to let you know.”

Damn. Katharine sat up uncaring as the sheet pooled near her belly leaving her mostly exposed, “I suppose that will have to wait for a later day,” Elizabeth was already retrieving her shirt from where Katharine had flung it earlier in the day.

“Not if you help me dress,” Katharine said.

“And make my husband wait?” Elizabeth raised an eyebrow, “How utterly devious of you Miss Norrington.”

“Indeed Miss Turner.”

If they were late to meeting Will he didn’t comment. Instead he just gave them a small tilt of his head before inviting them over onto The Dutchman and into his cabin.

\---

Things had changed a great deal over the past seventeen years. But time was something that could not be denied, shifting sands and the tilt of the earth forcing the world to change without so much as asking if it wanted to. Katharine and Will tied to The Dutchman as they were, looked much the same as they had the day they died, but Elizabeth had changed some. Not as much as people thought she might considering. They were the last of what they felt was the dying early age of pirates, where mystical things lurked in the sea. There were no more kraken's to fight. Eventually pirates would lose a foothold in the world, they had long ago made peace with this, but the idea of being without each other was painful. The discovery of The Fountain of Youth had fixed a number of things for them. It didn’t make Elizabeth invincible, but it made things easier.

They had blown the location of the fountain to high hell after they had used it to Jack’s cries, but it was better this way. For all of them. When Elizabeth was ready to go Will would pass the ship onto someone new and like the age of piracy they too would pass. But that time was not yet, not for a number of years yet, and until then they took their pleasures in spitting in the face of The Crown that had wronged them. Had hurt them enough times for them to not care as much as they used to - about the money taken from her coffers. A few soldiers, killed in raids.

They did their best to mitigate the taking as many lives as they could when they took ships, but people were starting to fight back again, even if they couldn’t win. The world was growing braver. Thus their current situation, “I’ve heard word from James,” Will was saying sitting in his captain’s chair as he looked at them, “That they have started to give up the chase.”

“How do you know?” Katharine asked, spinning the globe he kept in the cabin.

“Word says they have settled into Tortuga,” Will continued, “Not for the long haul perhaps but for enough time that it seems like they are taking a less than minor amount of shore leave.”

“Caroline is in Tortuga,” Katharine said.

“As long as she stays out of trouble she will be fine,” Elizabeth reassured her, “We can go look in on her once we know they have abandoned the island.”

What Elizabeth said felt nice, but something sat in the bottom of Katharine’s stomach. A knot that tugged. She would ignore it for now, but it didn’t mean it wasn’t there, sitting in the very bottom of the depths waiting to be unraveled, “Are we in the clear then?” Katharine asked.

That was what she really wanted to know, because it all sounded just a little bit too good to be true, “Not yet,” Will held up his hand when Katharine made to speak again, “But soon. Then we will go to Tortuga and celebrate Katharine’s birthday, as we always do.”

“We won’t have anything to give her this year,” Elizabeth sounded put out.

“I think she will be happy just to see us,” Katharine said, “I’m sure that whatever she’s been up to, just seeing us will be enough.”

A gust of wind swept through the cabin and ruffled a few papers. Katharine grinned, at the same time Elizabeth turned to look at her. Turning Katharine swept out of the cabin and onto the deck. As if some mist had parted, The English Rose sat next to The Dutchman in full sail, its captain standing upon its deck watching as a number of men - of specters - ran around the deck to secure the plank for crossing. It had been the first time since the three of them had parted that Katharine had seen him. Her choice to stay on The Empress instead, rather self evident, “You’re alive,” she breathed.

“Of course I’m alive,” he answered.

Still, Katharine always had to check when she saw him. Years later and she could still hardly believe sometimes that he was real, “You know what I mean,” she chided him.

“Well,” James Norrington crossed over onto The Dutchman, “It’s hard to chase a ship you cannot see. As the most wanted man on the seven seas right now I do feel safer than most.”

“We were discussing plans,” Katharine informed him, “To go to Tortuga and see Caroline when all this is over. It seems that she’s ready to join us in this nonsense.”

“To be completely truthful, I would be far more comfortable with her here instead anyway. Especially after what happened a few weeks ago. If she runs afoul of the wrong people I fear what they would do to her.”

“Caroline is smart,” Elizabeth reminded them.

“Caroline is also alone in pirate territory having no idea that her father is currently their number one, and that her last name puts her in danger,” James told her, “My priority is her safety.”

“Well,” Will interrupted them, “As fun as this little chat is, we could sit here for a long time debating the merits of Caroline’s safety.”

“Or?” Norrington asked.

“Or we could go enjoy the rum that we stole off that merchant ship and reminisce on old times.”

“I vote the rum,” Elizabeth said.

It seemed like rum was the answer then, and together the four of them descended into the galley of The Dutchman the laughter of the men on the beach carrying them down into the hull.

\---

Later that night Katharine sat on the bow of The English Rose notes of her flute dancing out into the darkness. It was the same song that Calypso had given her long ago, that would lead her to Caroline. It did nothing now of course, the magical use of it had long been removed, but as she played something about the song sounded - off. Like the notes were not wholly the same, parts of it changed under her nose. Katharine had long accepted that the flute would play what she wished as she wished, but that there was sometimes a rare occasion when it played what the ocean wanted her to hear. She started playing again listening to how the song sounded, and that’s when she noticed it. Everything had shifted from a jaunty major key to a much sadder minor one. Just be sure she played it again but there was no mistaking it, “Did you change the song?”

James stood behind her, having snuck up on the wind, “No,” she told him, “But I think Caroline is in trouble.”

His eyes drifted shut and she could read the pain in his posture, “My fault,” he said, “I should have paid more attention before the raid.”

When Will and James raided they would often use The English Rose to tail the ship for a good ten to fifteen minutes before making a decision. Often The English Rose would sail right next to the intended target without them even realizing it. It helped them take stock if the raid was worth it or not. What sort of crew, what the chance of fighting back was. When they had their finger on the pulse of the ship they had chosen, The English Rose would let the ship they were chasing make strides ahead before finally unveiling. It helped keep the idea that it was a real ship in the mind of those it was about to broadside. The cost of this mistake was proving more costly by the second, “You could not have known,” she tried for comfort, “But we must set sail for Tortuga now.”

James squeezed her shoulder, “I will rouse the crew. Let Elizabeth and Will know, neither will be happy but if we must sail through the night we will.”

“She will be fine,” Katharine said, eyes narrowing, “If she is not I will raise hell on all of them James. I don’t care if the mysticism has been long forgotten, I will bring it back to return her to me.”

“If you think I would not do the same,” he kissed her briefly, “We will raise them to the ground my love.”

His cry to ready The English Rose for travel, pierced the night air and Katharine stood and walked across the deck to her captain’s quarters. They would not touch her daughter. Katharine had defied death once, and she would do it again. Come hell or high water.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Katharine POV again at last! The last chapter of Katharine POV was very Caroline focused, so this one really feels like an overview of what they've been up to for the past seventeen odd years or so and how they've changed since Caroline turned nine. Lots of nods to the slow decay of magic/choice for people who remember magic to go more underground with its use. But also a few hints to all the characters being a little more hardened than we are used to in the Pirate films where they are mostly cast as the good guys. Despite being pirates lmao. 
> 
> This chapter is a bit of a step back from the last one which had a lot going on, and in which Peter died. But worry not! We'll be going back to Caroline very shortly. I just need to get some pieces moving in the same direction. 
> 
> Thank you for reading :)


	12. Part 3.2: The Dying

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Caroline in captivity.

Caroline’s head cracked on the wood of the ship’s inner hull as they threw her into their one lone brig. It was clear that they had just created this space from how new the wood was. Probably for her father - Caroline’s mind supplied uselessly. She hardly had time to put up any sort of a struggle, before her hands were shackled to the wall of the ship. They were set with chains so she had freedom of movement, but not enough to reach the edge of her cage. Symbolic really. Just enough give to offer the illusion of freedom. Of choice. England summed up by captivity. The officers left her there as they walked back up to the deck to get the ship ready for departure and the whole time Caroline’s mind whirled. Stuck on Peter, his lifeless body on the floor of The Governor's Mansion.

He had died trying to defend her, had died trying to protect her. Caroline should have listened to her inner voice that sounded a lot like her father when Peter had suggested the party. No matter how hard you try, he had told her some time ago, no matter how much you strive or fight to be known - once they see you as a pirate - it is hard to wash all of that off. It was an invisible brand on the flesh. Pressed over the part of the body where the heart resided. No matter who you met you had to be careful. No last names unless you knew they could be trusted. Caroline had trusted Peter. And it had been the right thing, to trust him. But Peter was dead.

They were going to try to pin his death on her. They would probably get away with it. It didn’t matter if she put on her kindest - nicest - face. They would just see a pirate. None of the things she had learned at school would help her now. Those were rules for those who said they lived in a civilized world. There were no allies to be found on this ship, the rest of Hales' crew seemed more than happy to let her take the fall. Anger boiled up in her unlike she had known herself capable of. ‘I was angry when I found out England had killed my father’ Elizabeth had told her, ‘I wanted to see them burn, and they did’. Her father and mother had clinked glasses over that. They agreed with her. With Elizabeth’s rage. Caroline wanted to absorb all of Elizabeth’s rage. Make it her own and bind her body with it.

For some time, how long Caroline knew not, she sat in the dark gathering the storm clouds, until the ship lurched and the shout went off from above deck that they were officially leaving the shallow waters. Through the wood grain she could feel the sea, a force that would carry her to her fate. Whatever it was. Come what may.

A number of minutes later the door to the hold opened and Hales walked down the staircase. He stopped in the back of the room to look at her before grabbing a bucket and dragging it over to the cell where she was sitting, “I did not mean to do it.”

Platitudes, “But you seem dead set on blaming me.”

“Well,” he leaned forward, “You are a pirate.”

“I was just a girl at a party with the boy she loved. The boy she dreamed of marrying. But you took that away from me Hales. And if you think my parents aren’t going to find you -”

“That’s actually what I was hoping would happen.”

What? Why would he hope to fight her parents? Didn’t he know what they could do? Didn’t he have any idea how strong they were? She blinked slowly, “They are stronger than you,” she said with a bit of peculiarity, “People forget the past so easily.”

He leaned back and she could see something pass over his features. Understanding, it was understanding. Of what? He tapped his foot on the ground and then leaned forward, “You might think me unknowledgeable but I was old enough to remember when Cutler Beckett died,” Caroline’s blood froze, her whole body reacting as if she had jumped into a poll of ice cold water, the prick of a thousand needles, “I was twenty some years old. Old enough to be your father now even. There were whispers of course, of how the battles then were different. Maelstroms conjured from nothing, krakens in the deep, undead pirates. I heard it all,” so he knew then, or at least believed he knew, “True or not it matters little. In two days time we will meet up with four other English ships and we will wait for your parents. And we will sink their ships before they can even lift a finger. Then you will be hung for your father’s crimes.”

“You think this is a trap,” Caroline said softly, she understood his game now, “You think this is your battle to win.”

“You think it’s not?”

“I think that the sea has always favored us,” Caroline told him, “I think your dreams of victory are as dead as you will be in three days time.”

Hales scratched his nose and then pulled something out of his pocket. It was a puzzle box, Caroline realized. A puzzle box that had etchings carved into it. Of storms and lightning, ships drowning at sea. Battles lost, “Do you know what I think?”

“I have a feeling good sir you plan to tell me whether I say yes or no.”

“I think” he played with the small box, “I think that Calypso is dying,” the ice in Caroline’s body expanded until the fear speared her heart “I think that she has slowly been dying these past seventeen years and the pirates haven’t even noticed, too caught up their little dalliances. I think she will be dead by the end of week. So that when I open this box, I will win. That is what I think.”

The merchant ship, the naval officers waiting below deck, all of it had been a trap. They hadn’t meant to capture Caroline, all they needed to do was force the hand of her parents. Of Will and Elizabeth. To put them in a situation where fighting was the only outcome. She had just been a bonus. Hales stood and looked back at her. His eyes held so much pity that Caroline wanted to pull them out. Wanted to stomp on them, and then throw the remains into the sea for the fishes to tear apart.

When he left Caroline collapsed onto the floor of her jail cell.

\---

The day passed and Caroline only received visitors in the form of the poor boy who had been conscripted to bring her food. Wanted the pirate to look as powerful as possible for display, when they got back to England after the battle. The stronger she looked, the more likely it was The Crown bought her as the lord heir apparent killer Hales claimed she was. Below the deck, chained and denied her freedom, Caroline felt truly powerless. It wasn’t hopeless, she refused to believe that it was, but her thoughts were scattered and she could not yet see a way out.

When she slept she dreamt of Teach. Of rope between her fingers and how the sails sounded when they were going at top speeds. She remembered almost winning Whist. Of the hold flooded beneath her feet as the storm raged above her, how Peter had held her and how safe she had felt. The feel of Anamaria’s fist on the inside of her belly. Scarlett’s eyes as they watched Giselle work the floor. Their laughs. Freedom that had been lost.

The sea. Wide, vast, and dying all around her.

\---

On the second day their ship dropped anchor. Wherever they were it didn’t matter much to Caroline. But they must have reached their destination. The place they would meet up with the other four ships under Hales’ command. She refused the breakfast they brought her, if they wanted her to be strong she would look as weak as possible. She refused lunch too, and instead of leaving her to own devices, her obstinacy got her a visit from Hales, “You should eat,” he told her, “If you died of starvation that would be very unfortunate.”

“Unfortunate for me or for you? If I died you wouldn’t have anyone to blame Peter’s death on.”

“You’re being combative for no reason. Sometimes we just need to accept things as they are and make the best of it. Don’t you want the rest of your days to be comfortable? Starvation is not pretty.”

Accepting things as they were seemed like the worst thing that Caroline could imagine, “How I look hardly matters to you,” she shrugged, “And while the sea might be dying she still favors us.”

“The way you still believe in her is touching. But she will not come for you, just as she hasn’t for the past so many years. I will sink The Empress, I will rake The Dutchman from bow to stern, and I will see The English Rose at the bottom of the ocean. And then when they are gone, this golden age of piracy we seem to have found ourselves in will end.”

“You’re wrong,” Caroline didn’t know how she knew, but she could feel it deep in her gut.

“Are you willing to bet your life on that?”

Caroline looked at him from under her hooded eyes, “I’m willing to bet your life. Since we both know you won’t kill me.”

“You don’t look like you’ve ever killed anyone before,” he sized her up and down, “I doubt you will start with me.”

“I can learn for you,” Caroline said, “I take to things quickly. Even if I’m not good at all of them. Or so my Aunt Elizabeth says.”

“Well then,” he stood, “You can tell that to her when I send her dead body to you here tomorrow.”

He stood and did not look back. Under her fingers Caroline could feel the boat as it moved, small tremors that climbed up her spine and tapped the rhythm of the ocean.

\---

That night Caroline drifted off to sleep for what she thought might be the last time. But when she opened her eyes it wasn’t morning. Instead she stood on a beach full of dark sand. In front of her was a black ocean filled with souls that passed in front of her. A sandbar twisted a path through the waves, lit up by a number of bioluminescent crabs. With no one around her Caroline began to walk the sandbar, the only path provided to her. As she walked, the crabs scattered at her feet and made little plops into the ocean of the dead. Eventually, enough crabs had escaped into the dark waters that the ocean looked like it reflected a curtain of stars. And still Caroline continued to walk, and walk, until she could no longer see the shore. Until only the sand crabs guided her way through the dark waters. Until she found herself standing in front of a small island of sand that had to be no bigger than the smallest sail on a large pirate boat.

In the middle of the island a woman stood. She was the most beautiful woman Caroline had ever seen, but her face was covered in wrinkles. Lines that creased her face and made her smile even more kind when Caroline approached. She held out her hand and Caroline took it. It felt like the back of a scallop shell, smooth but for a few creases. Like if you held it to your heart, it could tell you all the secrets of the ocean. For a little bit they sat there staring out at the crabs and the water, the crash of the waves around them, “I am dying,” the woman finally said, “but I do not die.”

“I’m sorry, I’m afraid I do not understand. How can something be dying, but not die?”

“You need look no further than the stories your family have told you. The undead pirates cursed by their desire for gold, a man cursed by the woman he betrayed. Dying does not mean that one will die.”

Words spoken into the winds of the sea, words accepted as a gift, “Calypso,” Caroline said.

“That is what men call me. But I have many names. Temptress. Devil. The Storm. The Rage. They are all the same.”

“Calypso is what they call you when they love you,” Caroline whispered.

“Yes,” she answered, “That is what they call me when they love me.”

“Will you come to our aid?”

At her question Calypso laughed and it sounded like birds fighting over the dead carcass of a fish washed ashore, “No. This self will give up on me by tomorrow’s sunrise.”

“So then you will die,” Caroline accused her.

“I will be reborn,” she answered, “As I am always reborn. As was foretold the day your mother birthed you. The magic of the ocean never truly dies, it just passes on anew.”

The words that the goddess had spoken sunk deep down into the places where Caroline understood things, and she tried to pull away. To turn back to the sandbank. But Calypso’s hand held fast upon her wrist, “Let me go!”

But the tide had already started to pull her to the ocean and Calypso tugged her so they could see eye to eye, “I asked your mother not to hate me next time we saw each other, I believe she will keep that promise.”

Panic gripped Caroline, “What of me will remain?”

“We will lose nothing,” Calypso answered her, “But we will gain everything. Just as we always do.”

Water had begun to flood their small island. The sandbar long swallowed up by the coming tide. Calypso let go of her hand and Caroline watched as her body returned to the sea, cascading into formless sand, floating uselessly on the skin of the ocean. The water continued to get higher, and higher until Caroline was choking on it. Drowning in the liquid salt. Then the sky disappeared.

Caroline woke to cannon fire. But Caroline wasn’t Caroline - or - she was Caroline. But she could feel the sea stretching out endlessly under her. Could feel the wind that battered the sails above her, could feel a shark as it devoured a fish from flesh to bone, the rain that sat heavy in the sky and the storm clouds that screamed to gather, the sharp static of lighting and the heavy drum of thunder. How the sea was in everything it touched. In the blood of sailors, in the eyes of a woman who cried for her daughter lost to sea.

Caroline’s wrists turned to mist and the cuffs slipped from them and clunked heavy on the ground. She was free.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There have been hints here and there that this was coming. 
> 
> This chapter is why struggled over the character death tag for way too long. Because technically canon Calypso dies, but also she doesn't die. And then technically Caroline also dies here, but she also doesn't die. It's... a merging of people I suppose. Anyway I adore Caroline this chapter so much, she's very angry a lot of the time, but she never really gives up hope or faith. And it's rewarded, although perhaps not in the way she would have liked. 
> 
> Thanks for reading!


	13. Part 3.3: The Battle Plan

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Katharine quests to recover her imprisoned daughter.

The English Rose appeared on the horizon of Tortuga like a ghost. No one knew it had arrived until they blinked and suddenly there it was, sailing deftly into port. Next to it The Dutchman sailed with white sails unfurled, and next to The Dutchman, The Empress. It was perhaps the most impressive show of force that Tortuga had ever seen. Pirates came out of their rooms to stand on balconies to shade their eyes, shocked at the display. This was almost like finding out all the fairy tales you had been told were true. A year down the line everyone would swear it never happened, because it was too hard to believe, but for now the three ships pulling into port at the same time seemed like a waking dream. Scarlett, who had been cleaning in the brothel for the mid afternoon rush, heard the commotion and wondered at the whispered voices outside. Now Scarlett wasn’t your average Tortugan resident anymore, so she remembered the day as most refused to remember it. Clearly, and without the haze of memory, without the disbelief.

With little care she threw her wash rag down onto one of the tables and walked out the door to the docks. In her mind she had a single determination - to meet the source of the clatter. Because of this Scarlett was the first person to meet Katharine when she stepped out of the rowboat to stand on Tortuga’s dock. The first person who Katharine made eye contact with. An almost stranger with eyes that said she knew exactly why Katharine was here. For a moment Katharine struggled to remember who this woman was, but it came to her quickly and she recovered her thousand yard stare, “Scarlett.”

“Thank god you’re here,” she said.

Katharine exchanged a glance with Elizabeth. The look that Scarlett wore was grave. Katharine had known that the sound of her flute had been an omen - now that she was accustomed to listening to it - but by the way that Scarlett looked at her she felt something hold onto her heart and squeeze. She wanted to turn back to the ships where their husbands were manning their respective crews, but knew that was not an option. Whatever Scarlett had to say, Katharine would hear it, for her daughter, “What happened?”

“Oh god where to begin,” Scarlett looked terrified, “Caroline arrived here two months ago although I didn’t hire her until around the third week mark -”

“Scarlett you are babbling,” Giselle had arrived, having seen Scarlett leave, “They were invited to a party a few days ago at The Governor's Mansion. Caroline decided to go since it was that Peter boys birthday, and it was something she could give him -”

“We don’t know exactly what happened up there but the Mansion servants say that at some point there was an altercation,” Scarlett interrupted Giselle picking up where her friend had cut her off, “Then they were dragging Caroline down the street in irons. They said she had killed Peter. But that’s more unbelievable than a man not falling for Giselle’s charms. She loved that boy.”

“Peter is dead?”

Katharine could hardly believe it. Caroline had been enamored with him, although both she and James had thought to not say anything afraid that letting her know how much she cared for the boy would spook her off him entirely. Caroline’s heart wasn’t fickle but it was flighty, and they worried if she knew that she was emotionally compromised she would flee the feeling. To hear that Peter was dead - something terrible must have happened, “Yes,” Giselle told them, “They brought his body down into the square and displayed it. Reminded everyone exactly what it was pirates do. Everyone here is basically a pirate already so it didn’t do much for that deterrent, but it had the town spooked for the whole night.”

“The brothels were empty!” Scarlett said, “If that doesn’t tell you how put out everyone was.”

“We took him down this morning when they left on their ships but we didn’t dare while they were still in the town.”

“They are going to pin his death on her,” Katharine said evenly, “They are going to pin the death of a Lord of The Crown on my daughter, and they will hang her if they get the chance.”

“Thank you,” Elizabeth told them both honestly, and then to Katharine she said, “We need to return to the ships. There isn’t anything else we can learn here. And what we have learned is more than enough.”

Scarlett pressed her lips together as if she was considering saying something. Finally as Katharine and Elizabeth were getting back in the rowboat they had come in, she said, “Tell Caroline we’re sorry. And that we miss her dearly.”

“I will,” Katharine promised them, “I will.”

What went unsaid of course was that they had to find Caroline first. What also went unsaid was that they would. The idea that anyone could stand against them was fleeting. Katharine would find her daughter. There was no question in her mind now.

\---

James glanced up from the chat he and Will were leaning over when Elizabeth and Katharine returned. He stood straighter as they entered, something that he had never shaken from his days in the navy. When he needed to be at attention, he was at attention. If she wasn’t so driven to find the daughter that England had taken from her, Katharine would have described his nature as cute. Or adorable. As it was, she did not process any of that. Instead she looked at her husband and said, “Peter is dead,” James’ mouth thinned, “And they have our daughter.”

“Fuck,” James said in a rare break of language.

But Katharine could not disagree. Caroline was their whole world, a child of miracle. And she owned their hearts so, “If they have her, chances are they are taking her to England to be hung,” Katharine swiveled so her gaze now rested on Will and his comments had not made her happy, “Wait,” he said before she could begin to yell at him for being so rational and uncaring about Caroline’s situation, “That means we know where they are going,” he continued, “From Tortuga there are many ways across the Atlantic to reach England. But with the headwind being as it is, and the season being as it is, there are only a few true paths they can take. And if they want to be fast about it, there is only one wind that can take them across the ocean at the speed in which I am guessing they will want to travel.”

“We can track them,” James told her.

That was the sort of news that Katharine wanted to hear, “So we should begin plans to set sail now.”

“Yes,” James said, “That would be paramount.”

“We will work out a plan of attack while we sail, they have already gotten a good day on us. Our ships are not The Pearl but they are fast and we should catch up if we sail through the night,” Will agreed.

“I will guide us,” Katharine tapped her flute, “Men are good in the rigs and with the maneuvering of sails, but if we want to move quickly I can make sure that our sails are always exactly as we desire them to be.”

“The men will not be happy about not having much to do,” Will warned her.

“The men will enjoy the time off before we go into battle,” Katharine said, “Not to mention, some of the men are ghosts,” she paused, “Captain.”

“Very well quartermaster,” Will did something between a grunt and a laugh, “You will guide us.”

The laughter felt out of place considering the situation that they were about to go into but it did help ease just a little bit of the tension that Katharine had started to feel in her shoulders. With a nod Will walked onto the deck, Katharine a few steps behind him, James and Elizabeth joining them mere seconds after. On the deck Will began to shout orders to prepare the ship for launch while James stood with Katharine at the crossing between The Dutchman and The English Rose. Their foreheads brushed softly as he whispered to her, “Guide us well my love.”

“Calypso will keep us safe,” Katharine told him, “The sea has not given up on us yet.”

“Nor shall we ever give up on her.”

He left a kiss on her forehead before he crossed the plank and joined his crew. Shouts were heard and ropes were cut loose and planks removed, setting The Dutchman free of both The Empress and The English Rose. Walking to the bow of the ship Katharine brough the flute up to her lips and began to play. As she did she felt the ropes in the rig tighten, felt them as they dragged and snapped into place. And finally felt the wind catch in the sails. All three ships began to depart the port, and Katharine played on.

\---

They sailed straight on for three days. On The Empress they worked in shifts to remain energized. Let Katharine do most of the work when they grew tired. Because Katharine was undead she needed no sleep, and she only took breaks when Will forced her away. When her playing got sloopy thanks to mental exhaustion settling in. On the third day Will yelled halt out to the crew and walked up next to Katharine, spyglass in hand. He opened it and looked through it at the horizon and Katharine squinted trying to see what he was looking at. A grim look passed over his features, “There are five ships out there,” he told her.

A few knots behind them, The Empress and The English Rose had come to a stop, waiting for The Dutchman to make a move, “This is a trap,” Katharine said realizing what Will had, “They are using Caroline as bait.”

“If it’s a trap they know something we don’t.”

Katharine actually had an idea about that, “While we were sailing,” she said, “I felt the power of my flute wane a few times,” Will stared at her, “At first I thought it was exhaustion, and a few times it must have been. But there were other times where I knew it wasn’t and had no answer for it.”

“You think Calypso’s power is faltering.”

“Captain I think it has faltered,” Katharine looked out over the ships, “I think if we go out there and they shoot me, I may bleed in a way I have not bled in some time.”

Will’s heart had been returned to him long ago, but his choice to remain on The Dutchman meant that it no longer beat. Frozen in time, a relic that had long lost its ability to function. If he ever left the ship’s command it would beat once more. He massaged where it sat over his shirt and he glanced back out at the five ships waiting for him, “I had felt jitters, but I thought it was my nerves for battle.”

“It’s beating,” she said, “your heart.”

“In starts and stops, as I imagine yours does. There is still some small power in the sea,” he dropped his hand, “We still have to go through with this.”

“I know,” Katharine continued to look at the ships, “If the ghosts on The English Rose begin to fade -”

“James will be left defenseless,” he looked over at the ship, “Your flute might be losing its power but it still works. It’s a sound idea,” his gaze carried across the waves to The Empress, “Elizabeth will be fine because her ship is the only one among us that does not rely on Calypso.”

It was meant to comfort her, but the way they were going about fighting this was so far from how they normally took apart ships. During sea combat, The Dutchman and The English Rose usually ran point while Katharine stood on the deck of The Empress and played to keep other ships from damaging their weakest point. But if no one could defend The Empress - no, Katharine refused to think about it. Elizabeth was seasoned, they were old pirates, as young as they all looked. What they lacked in the sea’s favor they would make up for with experience, “I will tell James and Elizabeth.”

Will nodded and then turned to yell at the crew, to gather them for the plan they had crafted. In front of him Katharine prayed that the magic had not faded as much as it was assumed and dropped into the sea and let it take her. Thankfully her lungs didn’t explode, and she began to swim over to the other ships, hidden under the water. Never surfacing to breathe, glad she did not need too.

She told Elizabeth first, and then joined James on The English Rose. Even though her being on the deck was a thing of circumstance she was glad that she was here of all places. If they were to get through this, she and James would need each other. There was no one Katharine would rather see battle with. She joined him on the quarterdeck as he yelled out commands to the specters of his ship, watching them as they drifted out from the wood and started to get to work.

There were fewer of them than normal. But they would preserve, “At your command darling.”

Katharine began to play. The ships moved into position. Then, as Katharine reached the crescendo of the current song she was playing - cannon fire.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think Norrington is the first PotC character to say fuck? Maybe the first to say it period in my fic. But I figured that he did deserve to say it. His daughter is in dire straits! 
> 
> Also parts of this chapter make me a little sad. Caroline is still Caroline in most ways but she's also now Calypso, and both Norrington and Katharine are so desperate to get her back. But they don't know that so much has changed and that the last time they got to see their daughter before her transformation was so long ago.
> 
> Thanks for reading!


	14. Part 3.4: The Storm

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hales' plan takes form and time begins to run out.

Everything felt different. Yet nothing felt different. Caroline didn’t know how to explain it. Didn’t know how to categorize how she suddenly felt a millennia older, and yet as if she had just been born seventeen years ago. She stepped forward to the front of the jail cell and her body shimmered, like water. Then she passed through the rails, as water. It had been so easy and Caroline marveled at it. Marveled at the things that spun in her head. The men she had loved, the ones who had died for her, betrayed her. The despair she felt in her heart when she remembered the part she had played in the death of Davy Jones, the rage that accompanied her all encompassing grief. She had left it to fate and he had lost the coin toss - caught up in her maelstrom. Despite all this, she somehow still carried Caroline inside of her. The memories, the emotions, nothing had been lost. She had been right when she had told herself that she would lose nothing and gain everything. The world had opened up to her in such a way that it seemed impossibly vast. Above her from the gun deck she could hear people moving around.

Then the sound grew closer and the door above her opened and two men came into the temporary hold they had made for her. They stared at her in confusion, eyes landing on the still locked cell, and then back on her, “How did you get out?”

Caroline tilted her head, rubbed her writs, “It’s expressly clear that I walked out.”

“That’s not possible.”

“Not when your mind is small,” she told him, “You English navy men have never had much creativity. Too dependent on last second conjured storms to protect yourselves. The luck of the sea.”

They drew their swords and Caroline eyed them with a fair little bit of disinterest, “Well, we will just have to put you back in,” one of them said.

They surrounded her and both attempted to attack her at the same time, slicing into Caroline’s body. But their swords passed through her body as swords passed through a drop of water and she grabbed one of their wrists breaking it. The man screamed, dropping his sword on the floor. The other man scrambled back unsure of what he was seeing as Caroline bent down to pick up the dropped sword, flourishing it around in the air to test out it’s balance. It was nothing like the sword that Will had made for her - long forgotten in the room she had shared with Peter in Tortuga - but it would do. The man with the unbroken wrist stepped forwards two paces to engage Caroline in the fight but she felt it before he did.

Under her a wave crashed into the hull of the ship and titled the ship sideways, so Caroline stepped backwards up the tilt and the man’s sword went wide, the tip of his weapon too high up to counter when the wave under the ship careened the ship in the opposite direction and Caroline followed it down towards him, striking her sword just under his rib cage and cutting a bloody gash under his shirt that left him floundering on the ground as his body bleed out. Hales had said she wasn’t the sort of person who could kill someone but Caroline was finding it far more simple than he had warned. She smiled.

She had killed thousands of men in thousands of storms before. One life like this - this was nothing. A drop in the proverbial ocean, so to speak. It hardly even landed a glancing blow. She turned to the other man who hadn’t stopped looking, hadn’t stopped staring as Caroline had killed his compatriot with ease, “Who are you?”

“You hardly deserve the knowledge of my name,” Caroline did not hesitate before running him through.

Let him join his friend.

As he fell to the ground eyes lifeless, Caroline felt the world shift under her. The sea’s own power was still waning and she needed to feed it in order for her parents to survive. They had to hold out just a little longer. With nary a glance at the dead men on the floor Caroline walked through the wood of the ship, body leaving a trail of mist behind, and felt the wonder of the ocean’s embrace as she finally rejoined with the rest of herself.

\---

They were overwhelmed but somehow holding. Elizabeth, was doing her best to remain only in the firing range of one of the ships and had sent half her crew to one of the other ships to hopefully disrupt their attempts to join the battle. Her plan seemed to be working so far.

The English Rose thankfully had gotten caught by only one ship and while their own crew had already been whittled down to half by the fading of the sea, Katharine’s flute had only flattered once, which had led to a cannon impacting the rail. She knew that James was doing all he could in his power to keep the crew of the ship they were fighting from boarding. Such a thing could be a death sentence for him, with such a small crew. On the other hand Will had engaged two ships and was already in the middle of fighting off two different boarding parties. They were not fully alive yet - Katharine could tell it by the stillness in her heart - so she knew that his plan relied rather heavily on the hope that they would continue to be able to survive gunshot wounds and stabs for long enough that the two crews that he had engaged in combat with, were defeated.

Katharine played two decisive notes on her flute and two cannons fired into the ship they were fighting, impacting the hull. She played two more notes, and the cannons fired again. However she felt one of the cannons fight against the will of her flute. That was twice now that it had failed her but she continued to play. Across the way she could see a man watching her on the quarterdeck. Every so often his eyes would trail back to the deck of the ship and in her mind's eye, Katharine understood that he was counting the spirits and testing Katharine’s ability to bluff through each time the music failed her. She played two more notes and stopped one of the opposing ships' cannons, but the other one crashed into the rail of their ship and went spinning out to sea.

The man grinned. From his pocket he pulled - Katharine could hardly make it out - what seemed to be a very small box. He began twisting parts of it around, and then pressed two buttons in at the same time. The box unfolded into a small flat board, and as it did so a howling noise ripped through the ocean. It sounded like harsh wind battering through a tight passage, and it overpowered the sound of Katharine’s flute. On the horizon storm clouds began to gather with a quickness that Katharine had not seen since Calypso had been released during the battle that had determined the fate of piracy in the known world. A spat of lightning cracked through the sky, and the clouds began to whirl. Katharine shared a glance with James, “I have to board,” she shouted over the winds, “Whatever he just did will ruin us if I let it continue.”

“You are one person,” James yelled back, “And I will not lose you too.”

“Our daughter is somewhere among these ships James,” Katharine’s tone booked little room for argument, “And my heart has not truly started beating yet.”

“Katharine -”

“We will be dead either way, my love. Let me go stop this.”

He glanced over at the other ship and she could see the moment he let her go, “I will pull back a little so as to remove myself from as much cannon fire as possible.” He yelled down at the crew, “Loosen the top sail, to catch the wind, we are pulling back!”

One of the shades curled his fingers around the rope as Katharine stuck the flute into her belt. She climbed the rail of the quarterdeck and with a look back at James, dove into the water. As she hit it, she could tell that her body wanted to breathe. Just a little. Not enough that she needed to, but something in her brain was telling her lungs that they needed just a little taste of air. Something to whet the appetite. She buried that feeling. Instead, Katharine began her underwater swim.

\---

Caroline felt the moment her mother’s body entered the water. It was like a shock. Like the two of them were one in that moment. She could see her mother as she crossed over, boarded Hales’ ship. Above her too she knew that the storm had begun to rage. She was almost returned to power Caroline knew, she could feel the ocean around her. However it would do no good to plead with the sea to hurry, for it would have been the same as pleading with herself, yet the knowledge of her mother’s safety caused her heart to clench. To spike with the pain of loss. It was good then to know that there were still parts of her that loved her mother as fiercely as she ever had. But she needed to concentrate. To draw the rest of herself inward and heal.

Restoring power to those who were starting to feel it’s lack was not the only worry now. Immortal or not, a storm would wreck a ship in open water. Turn them upside down and sink them to the bottom of the locker. The Dutchman and The English Rose would heal, but The Empress would not. Elizabeth’s danger ran forefront of her mind. The Empress was already badly damaged. Caroline could feel the cracks in the ship as her hull sat in the water, and the masts as they struggled in the wind.

Hurry, her mind screamed. Hurry.

\---

Katharine gripped onto the sides of the opposing ship and climbed through one of the cannon openings surprising the man inside. She withdrew the dagger from her boot and hurled it at him, striking him in the neck and downing him instantly. A ruckus went up among the crew in the gun deck and Katharine drew her sword. There was no time to rely on the magic of her flute. Not when she was in so close quarters, and when its connection to the sea was so threadbare. Before the man on the gun - next to the man she had downed - could react she stuck him through as well. Two down she cast her eyes to the stair to the main deck. The men in the lower gun deck now had their swords out and she parried two strokes, doing her best to weave between the other men as they attacked her.

The only thing she had on her side right now was how narrow the gun deck was. It made it hard for so many men to maneuver around, and especially with swords no less. A man got the better of her and she felt his sword cut a gash into her side. Most of it healed, but a small sliver of it still bled. Her own undead state was much closer to wearing off than she had expected. It was moments like these that she still wished she had her father’s pistol. It only had one shot, but sometimes one shot was enough to deter people. However it was long burned, and Katharine knew that as an item of great power it too was connected to the sea. It would have probably fizzled out on her, just as her flute was starting to do.

With a small amount of skill and just enough luck she was able to kill another man, before she found her back to the stairwell. A cannon split the hull just a little bit in front of her, sending the men scattering, and leaving one of them in screaming pain as it impacted on him directly. The screams didn’t last long, as death came quickly and Katharine didn’t stick around long enough to find out just how mangled his body had become. Instead she fled up the stairs and found herself at the business end of a gun, “It was a good attempt,” the man was saying as he led her out into the open, “But I’m afraid that your time has come.”

All around them the storm raged but the ships owned by the English seemed untouched, as if whatever he had done had protected them from the harshest winds and waves, “Piracy will not die with us,” Katharine told him.

“No,” he said, “But the protection the sea has offered you for the past seventeen years will fade, and eventually the golden age of piracy will end. And I dare say that is enough of a victory, don’t you agree?”

He pulled the flintlock back on the pistol, and under her chest Katharine felt her heart spring to life for the first time in so very long. Beating like a traitor under her chest, “The ocean is not yours,” Katharine told him, “It will never be yours. And it will die fighting you.”

There was the sound of the flintlock as it came down. Then a snap as the bullet exited the pistol. The shot tore through Katharine and she felt her heart stop in its chest. The rushing sound of blood quiet in her ears. As the round exited the other side of Katharine’s body she did not feel it. Could not feel it. Instead the round impacted into the body of the man behind her and Katharine stood fast. What should have been a fatal shot had not been. Was not.

There was the sound of splintering wood and both occupants of the ship turned to look up onto the quarterdeck. The box that the man had used lay in shards in Caroline’s hand as she slowly dropped the pieces onto the deck below her, where the wind of the storm carried them off to sea. There was another howl of the wind and Caroline glanced up at them, “You tried to kill my mother Commodore Hales.”

Hales seemed as startled to see Caroline there as Katharine felt. Three crew members trained guns on her, as the so named Hales trained his gun on Caroline, “How did you get free?”

“The men in the hold asked the same thing, but I did not answer them.” Caroline told him, “As I shall not answer you. But I will tell you, that my mother is right. The sea will never be yours. Nor will it ever belong to The English or The Crown. And it will rage and rage, and perhaps it will die fighting you. But not today.”

Something caught in the back of Katharine’s memories. A stray thought. A phantom that haunted her with the knowing of it. A promise of destiny and the moving tides.

“We will not talk again for some time,” Calypso had said, “But when we do, please do not hate me so.”

Katharine had not understood then. Had not understood the gentle touch to her belly, or that Calypso was saying goodbye to her. Had Calypso known then? That she was dying? Or had she not known until, until, the idea forced itself out of Katharine and out into the open of her consciousness. Had she not known until Caroline was but a sickness in her throat? A hardly born thing. Did she know then? She must have. Caroline looked down at her, “Hello again mother.”

And Katharine whispered back, “Hello, Calypso.”

Caroline smiled. And when she did it was with the full joy of one who had been waiting her whole life to hear her name spoken with such adoration. Such love. And it was true, for Katharine did. And she would. And she could not, above all, hate her own daughter.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alternating POV this time as both stories, the past and the present, start to weave together as one. The utter love that Katharine has for Caroline is so evident here, and it makes me warm with how unshakeable it is. Meanwhile Caroline is dealing with her own changes, and new memories but is just able to regroup in the nick of time. Her Calypso is different that the Calypso we knew for obvious reasons, but there are shards of both of them in there. Calypso had her Davy Jones and Caroline had her Peter, and those lost loves define them rather heavily. 
> 
> Thank you for reading!


	15. Part 3.5: The Goddess

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The in sea in all her terrible glory. And the aftermath.

The pieces of the box dropped down onto the deck of the ship as Caroline crushed the box between the flesh of her hand, and the strength of the sea. Whatever connection to the ocean the box had given him, the connection was severed. He would not control the ocean this way again. Without even glancing at the sky Caroline could feel the storm begin to break apart. She looked up to find her mother staring at her. At Captain Hales stricken face. Good Caroline though, let him be terrified after what he had done. After he had killed Peter and stuck the blame on her. Let him feel the same sort of fear she had felt staring into the unknown and being thrown into a cell to await a death that she could not predict the time of. He could not tell who she was, did not know who he was staring at. But men who did not understand the sea could not - would not - ever understand her. Had never understood her.

She had loved Davy Jones because he had looked at her and seen the freedom inside her gaze. Had seen treasure and the beat of the tide and the call of the wind. And for a time it had been beautiful. But as age had caught up to him he had begun to fear the locker, had started to fear what his end would be. Would it be at the edge of a sword? A well fired cannon? Or would he wither and grow ugly. Would she stop loving him then? The fear had ruined him and he had turned on her. Convinced the other pirate lords that they should too. But where the sea lords had learned - and grown - Davy Jones had continued to fear that which he loved. And Caroline had wanted to give him another chance - had tried to - but she had seen the same fear in his eyes, and so he had been defeated at her hand.

Caroline had wanted to make him immortal. A king. And he had spat that back at her. Maybe a time would come for another. But it was not now - not with Hales looking at her with the same eyes she despised on Davy Jones. The same eyes she hated on every man who did not understand that the sea was freedom but it was also teeth. She caught the gaze of her mother and her mother looked at her differently, because her mother understood, “Hello, Calypso.”

Her mother had always understood. Because her mother did not fear death on the ocean. She did not fear the teeth that came with how much one had to sacrifice to the depths, in order to find the freedom that they craved. Her mother had loved, and lost, and been rewarded for her struggles. Caroline smiled at hearing her name spoken with such reverence, such love, “Mother.”

“No,” Hales said between clenched teeth, “Calypso is dead.”

Caroline sighed, “I have to say that rumor of my death has been greatly exaggerated. I don’t know who told you that, but they lied.”

Hales fired at her but the shot passed through her forehead like a ship cut through a misty morning. The metal ball caught the rail of his ship and sunk into the wood where it would remain. He began to reload his gun but Katharine stepped forward and placed the tip of her sword under his chin. Caroline began to walk down the stairs, hand on the rail of the ship. In a flash she watched as Hales smacked her mother’s sword away drew his own, and fighting exploded across the deck of the ship. The battle was not done yet. Hales stepped forward to strike his sword through Katharine’s breast but a gust of wind caught him by the chest and threw him across the deck, “I believe you will find your music greatly restored mother,” Caroline told Katharine.

Hales glared at Caroline, as Katharine drew her flute out and a single pure note cast about the sea. All around them cannon fire came to a stop and a second cheer went up among all the pirates as a mirror to the cheer of the crew of The Dutchman earlier. They knew what that sound meant. They knew what it was a herald of. The power of the ocean had returned.

As her mother began to play, Caroline ducked under Hales’ sword stroke and matched him with her own. The tide of battle had turned. As they skirmished across the deck Caroline remembered the advice that her parents had given her. The pole set up in her old bedroom to practice basic footwork. The sword fight on Teach’s ship. Calypso was a goddess, but Caroline was a pirate. For each attempt to cut into her insides Caroline would flourish and tap his sword away. For each strong attack she would block his own stroke with her sword, muscles hardened by learning to fight from Anamaria. Her arms held fast at each desperate strong blow to break through her barriers. Then she saw her chance.

Caroline caught his sword arm with her empty hand and made to strike her sword deep into his side. His empty hand shot out to grab her wrist but as his fingers encircled her wrist it turned to mist in his hand as it had in the hold, and Caroline’s sword struck true. In front of her she could see the moment the pain of being slit almost torso to the middle stomach registered. She pulled her sword from his midsection and blood followed. Hales eyes began to cloud over as blood loss caught up to him, “Calypso,” he looked wrecked, “I thought -”

“You shouldn’t have bet your life on a gamble you were always going to lose.”

She turned to see the ship strewn with bodies, and her mother lowering her flute as the last man came upon her. She blocked his sword with her flute and for a second they traded blows until her mother caught the man’s sword hand, kicked him in the chest and then brought the hard wood of her flute around the side of the man’s head. There was a sickening crack as it hit and the man went down on the deck. Her mother looked up at her and smiled, “I believe we’ve had our fun. We should get out of here before your father lights this ship up with his cannons.”

“He wouldn’t fire on this ship with us on it,” Caroline told her, “He wouldn’t dare.”

“Best not risk it.”

With a nod her mother turned and leapt off the side of the ship. Caroline watched her go before walking to the rail. She stood there for a moment before she jumped over the wood. Her feet hit the water but instead of sinking deep into the ocean she began to walk across it, as if it was the floor of a tavern. Cannons fired past her and rustled her hair. Behind her they cracked into the wood of the ship that Hales had once called his own. With each hole that was made into the ship, it filled with more and more water. Until it could stand the pressure no more and began to sink.

Caroline didn’t even turn to watch the waves claim it. It belonged to her now. The battle was over.

She had won.

\---

Instead of returning directly to Tortuga for what little remained of Caroline’s things they charted a course to the closest small spit of land and made anchor. The men on Elizabeth’s ship, and Will’s crew were especially thankful for the break. It had been decided that after coming so close to losing - everyone could - and should - let off a little steam. The battle had not been without its losses. Katharine had discovered this when Jean had come to her to let her know that Ralph had lost what little connection he had to the sea, and had faced his final death protecting her. She was beside herself, having already caused his death once, and Katharine had given her implicit instructions to go with the men to shore. If she so happened to find fun in one of their arms, Katharine did not begrudge her. Jean had laughed at that, and it had done enough to cheer her up somewhat.

She would find Ralph again on The Sea of the Dead, Katharine had reminded her. And this time she would be able to guide him to his true rest. As a friend. After they had finished their rest, and after Tortuga, Katharine knew that they would have to return to The Sea of the Dead. They had spent too much time in the world of the living, and Will tended to get a little itchy with worry when it wasn’t watched over. The shift of the ocean had begun to move again. Just as Calypso had told her ages ago.

Destiny.

Katharine stepped out from the Captain’s Cabin to find Caroline sitting at the bow of the ship, legs dangling off the side. She went to her daughter and sat next to her. Caroline didn’t turn but instead she said, “I could feel you approach. Just by how the ship shifted as you walked,” she continued to stare out over the ocean, “Is that strange?”

“No,” Katharine told her, “This ship is old and wood creaks.”

Caroline laughed, “I feel like I’m the same person, but I’m not. Who I was three days ago is not who I am today. I have been both unmade and made at the same time. Was who I was before incomplete? I don’t know. I don’t remember.”

“You’re still my daughter,” Katharine told Caroline, she would not let her ever forget.

“How do you know?”

“Do you remember the two years you hardly talked to me when you were a child?”

“Yes,” Caroline answered.

“And do you remember how on your fifteen birthday your father and I let you board his ship, and how you demanded, nay fought tooth and nail to get us to teach you how to sword fight on the deck of a ship at sea?”

Katharine could see by the look of embarrassment that passed over her daughter’s face that she remembered, “How could I forget?” She glanced over at Katharine, “I was right by the way mother. It did pay off.”

Katharine wasn’t going to argue that point with her. The original idea had been to acclimate Caroline to the inner workings of a ship, how to properly rig sails, how to store cannons. Instead it had turned into James chasing Caroline across the deck with his sword as Katharine watched on fondly, “And do you love me?”

“Of course!” Caroline sounded scandalized.

“Then you are still my daughter,” Katharine told her, “And as your mother I know you are in pain.”

Ever since she was little Caroline had been big on hiding her pain. If she cut herself, or fell down, or was angry or sad she would lock herself in her room and not come out until the feeling had passed. As the battle had wound down Katharine had witnessed her daughter retreating into herself. Had seen the same pattern unfolding in front of her eyes. Caroline tried to smile, and Katharine had smiled in return, but she had never seen a woman wanting to flee as much as Caroline. And now to find her on the deck of the ship when she should be ashore celebrating her victory over the English - well - Katharine wouldn’t have been Caroline’s mother if she didn’t know her own daughter.

“Peter is dead,” Caroline said softly, “He’s gone. They took him from me and I could do nothing to stop it. And now I can feel the turn of the tide, and the pull of the moon, Uncle Will sailing under my command on the sea of the dead, a flute that unearthed The English Rose, and he is still gone.”

Caroline collapsed into her mother’s lap, fingers curling around Katharine’s pants and gripping tightly, “I know,” Katharine said.

“I was in love with him,” Caroline said and her voice broke.

“I know,” Katharine said again.

Under her pant fabric she began to feel her leg become wet, and Katharine carded her hands through Caroline’s hair humming to her softly as her daughter cried, “Do you know the worst of it? I don’t know if he would love me now, but I’ll never find out. I’ll never know if he could love the sea as he loved the woman. If we could have been happy together.”

“Someday,” Katharine promised her daughter, “Someday you will find a Pirate Captain who captures the sea and who sings to the deepest part of your soul. And maybe if you are lucky, you will find a King, too. One who you love despite everything, whose smile and charm takes you away.”

Caroline sat up doing her best to dry her tears and smiled despite everything, “Mother I think you are talking about yourself.”

“Am I?” Katharine felt her eyes turn up and twinkle, “Maybe I am. But who can be sure.”

Caroline gave her mother a bit of a nudge. And Katharine began to laugh, whole and safe in the ocean’s arms. She had her daughter back, and that was all she had truly wanted in the end. Come whatever may, her family was whole and complete. A thriving and living thing. And they would conquer the seas together. Make of it a home.

\---

They docked far enough from Tortuga that their ships didn’t elicit the same shock and awe when they arrived. They also arrived early in the morning, when even the busy port was still just waking up. But some people were still awake and when Caroline stepped into the brothel Scarlett let out the loudest gasp, “Oh my god,” she yelled up into the working rooms, “Giselle!”

One of the doors slammed open and Giselle walked out looking so put together that it was hard to believe that it was so early in the morning, “Look what the cat dragged back in.”

She took the steps two at a time and a second later she had flung her body at Caroline’s body and the two of them were hugging, “I’m back,” Caroline joked.

“You’re back,” Giselle said, “We were so worried! This whole thing was our fault really, we shouldn’t have let you go to the party. We should have known better but you and -”

Her voice came to a stop before she could say Peter’s name but Caroline only breathed. Her mother had cleared the deck of her tears and now only fondness remained. Caroline had loved Peter. But the three days journey back had made it clear to her that it never would have worked. If Caroline was the sea then Peter was the land. And not even the sand that dotted the beach, Peter was a mountain far inland. Kind and beautiful, and so very brave and adventurous. But until the shot had left the pistol, he had been untouched by the hard life of the sea, “I know,” Caroline told her, “But it wasn’t your fault. It was my destiny to go to that party. You might not believe me when I say that and might find it a terribly rude thing to say, but from the day I was born there was no escaping that moment.”

“You’re right,” Scarlett said, “I don’t understand,” not many people ever would Caroline though, “But you are safe. And that’s what matters.”

“We will be in port for the night,” she told them, “I’d like to stay just one more time.”

They had let her come to shore on her own. Not like anyone could have stopped her if they tried, but her mother had only smiled and said that they would stay on the ships for the night. Give Caroline time to say goodbye alone, “You’re going with them aren’t you?”

Giselle had always been so sharp, quick to understanding. Caroline nodded, “Yes. My father could use hands on his crew, and I think I could be of help to him.”

The unsaid part was that even though she could feel the sea under her feet, there was so much of it she hadn’t seen with her eyes. She wanted to go everywhere. Wanted to swim with fish she could only hear whispering in the back of her mind. Stand on islands and feel the sand under her feet that didn’t quite match the sand between the cracks of her boots. The ocean would call to her now for the rest of her life and Caroline wanted to experience every inch of it she could, “Well come on then,” Scarlett said, gesturing her further into the room, “You can clean up the rest here.”

That night as men drank and made far too much merry around her, a dark presence loomed in the door and Caroline found herself staring at the overbearing presence of Edward Teach. Everyone in the brothel cleared out for him as he walked over to the small bar and sat down. Caroline passed him a mug of beer and he stared at her, “You’ve changed,” he said as a greeting.

“So you’ve heard,” she returned as her own.

“Word gets out among old retired Pirate Lords,” he knocked back almost the whole beer in one go and Caroline poured him another draught.

“It’s not the full return to the old ways,” she answered the question that lingered, “Not yet.”

He drank slowly this time, savoring the beer and her words, “Yet?”

“Destiny is still moving,” Caroline answered, “And there’s still a war to be had.”

“Whose war?”

“I don’t know,” Caroline answered honestly, “But aren’t you excited to find out?”

At her comment he laughed, “Not particularly,” he stood up to walk back into the crowd of women as Giselle cosied up to his side, “But if you call,” he looked at her seriously, “I’ll come.”

He was swallowed up by the brothel and Giselle’s promises of a good night and Caroline watched him go. Then her eyes scanned over the crowd of men again. If destiny did not lie the war would not be for some time yet. But when it came, and when Caroline felt the tug of the call to action she would follow. And - she grinned - she would win.

END

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter features Katharine's last POV ever but I think it's a good one and puts a spotlight on what she's become and how she's found what she's always been looking for, even if it wasn't in the way she expected. Meanwhile Caroline takes her first steps as a goddess. I particularly love the last scene between her and Teach. When they were on the ship together he was more of a father figure to her - and he's still that in some ways - but now he's her truest follower and I just love their relationship a lot ok? 
> 
> The third and final story should hopefully start going up on Friday. It's got a bit of a different tone, as we finally shift almost completely into Black Sails mode, but hopefully this story did a good enough job of moving us in that direction, so it shouldn't come as a total shock.
> 
> Thank you for reading!


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